From: Steve Litt <slitt@...>
Date: 2005-12-18T05:53:38+09:00
Subject: Re: New to coding, lost as hell

On Friday 16 December 2005 07:35 pm, Stephen None wrote:
> I've been looking into coding for a while now and would really
> like to start. Thanks to Google and a few friends I found Ruby
> and think it would be an excellent place to start.
>
> I've installed ruby (It says it's Ruby 182-15, I'm sure it's
> outdated now, since I did it several months back) and started to
> read through several guides (Learning Ruby and Why's (poignant)
> guide to Ruby). But the things don't match up to the stuff which
> comes with the Ruby install, or it's aimed at a different OS.
>
> I'm currently running Windows 98 (I don't need any more, so no
> reason to update) and the Ruby install comes with some
> documentation and FreeRIDE and SciTE editor. It seems FreeRIDE is
> the thing to use for basic stuff. So I open it and type in
> something basic (Print 'hello world') and run it.

Hi Stephen,

I don't know anything about FreeRIDE and SciTE, nor have I ever run 
Ruby on w98, but try this tutorial:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/codecorn/ruby/basictutorial.htm

Start by copying and pasting the code so that there's no chance of 
transcription errors. One thing -- If you're using Windows, you'll 
need to delete the line saying:

#!/usr/bin/ruby

I think what you do is tell the operating system that anything 
ending in .rb should be run through the ruby.exe or whatever, and 
then delete that line. If I'm wrong, others can tell you the right 
way.

If you don't trust the editors to which you refer, start with 
Notepad -- at least you can trust it, even if it's braindead and 
can only edit small files.

Welcome to programming!

SteveT

Steve Litt
http://www.troubleshooters.com
slitt@troubleshooters.com