From: John Joyce <dangerwillrobinsondanger@...>
Date: 2007-03-13T22:10:37+09:00
Subject: Re: I need to learn...

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On Mar 13, 2007, at 3:48 PM, 7stud 7stud wrote:

> Rick Denatale wrote:
> ... unfortunately I can't even find the /usr/local directory
> where everything is supposed to be installed.  Am I supposed to create
> that directory?  Who knows.  I hate installation instructions like  
> that;
> you feel lost before you can even start.

If that kind of stuff scares you, don't worry, you're not alone. That  
Unix command line stuff IS scary at times, especially in the  
beginning. I hate to tell you this, though, but if you're building  
web aplications or even static web sites, you need to learn the Unix  
command line stuff. It makes a whole lot of other stuff a lot easier  
to do and to understand. It's vital, but you don't need to learn all  
of it. If you're on a mac, get the Learning Unix for Mac OS X Tiger  
(or whichever version you have) from OReilly. It is a good intro to  
that stuff. While you're at it, UNIX in a Nutshell covers all of it  
unix/linux/osx/bsd because it's all mostly the same, but it also  
points out differences where important.
I know, you want to learn Ruby, and Rails, but these sit on top of  
some form of unix most of the time, and much of the programming world  
is basically built up on unix thinking and traditions (microsoft  
stuff aside)
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