λ time ruby -e0
real 0m0.004s user 0m0.002s sys 0m0.001s
I first tried Ruby about 2004/5 or so. downloaded it, did a few examples, thought meh and forgot about it.
2007 and I came across the try ruby site (during lunch at work, I think). Started on the tutorial and by about exercise 4 I "got it". Downloaded the Windows 1-click installer and couldn't get enough. Became very proficient at using the win32ole library to automate office apps and found Ruby a great tool for scripting my job away :)
fast forward a year and I got into Rails, then was able to move from enterprise Java dev into a small Rails shop, then onto the life of a freelance dev. I'd like to assume I'd have ended up here without that kick from TryRuby, but you never know
On a personal note, I'd much rather try a language in a browser, then download it if I like it.
Personally, I love browser based language introductions. On OS X for example, many Rubyists will tell you to install brew or rvm or rbenv, then a more recent Ruby (1.9.2 or 1.9.3 or...), then TextMate or more stuff for vim, ...
>> help
>> 2 + 6
<!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>The page you were looking for doesn't exist (404)</title> <style type="text/css"> body { background-color: #fff; color: #666; text-align: center; font -family: arial, sans-serif; } div.dialog { width: 25em; padding: 0 4em; margin: 4em auto 0 auto; border: 1px solid #ccc; border-right-color: #999; border-bottom-color: #999; } h1 { font-size: 100%; color: #f00; line-height: 1.5em; } </style> </head>
<body> <!-- This file lives in public/404.html --> <div class="dialog"> <h1>The page you were looking for doesn't exist.</h1> <p>You may have mistyped the address or the page may have moved.</p>
</div> require 'selenium/client' => #<NoMethodError: undefined method `require' for main:Object> > a = [] => [] > (1..999999999).each {|i| a << i} => Danger! Danger! Your code took too long to run. It's like a turtle it's so slow. > (1..9999999).each {|i| a << i} => Once, when waiting for some code to finish running, 3 angels visited Chris Barker and asked him to stop picking his nose
Get over yourself, dude. You're not championing anyone's cause but your own.
Only real difference now is you have the ability to save your progress as you go using your Code School account. If you don't want to, you don't have to. =)
-Gregg
> [1,2,3].each{|v| puts v} => "123"
*edit: Assuming this is deployment/back-end related issues. I just tried the above again and got this:
[1,2,3].each{|v| puts v} => #<SyntaxError: Invalid char "\xC2" in expression. near line 1: "\xADch{|v| puts v}">
> [1,2,3].each{|i| puts i}
=> "123"
> puts "Hello"
=> "123Hello"1. up/down arrows scroll through buffer history
2. ctrl-a goes to beginning of edit-buffer and ctrl-e goes to end of edit buffer
Nice attention to detail that makes it a pleasure rather than a chore.