

Try Ruby - chrisbaglieri
http://tryruby.org

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cppsnob
Serious question: has anyone gotten anything out of these browser-based
language playgrounds? I just don't think it's hard to download the real thing
to try it, so I thought I'd ask if anyone has really been inspired by it.

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cubicle67
Yeah, I'll put my hand up for this

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

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droithomme
Here's some things I was happy to find with this page:

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.

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TheDahv
I have never seen this before:

>> 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>                                                                

</body> </html>

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TheDahv
Oh! I had to force-refresh the page to see the new things. Hooray!!

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patched
You probably hit the error when we had a spike in traffic. We just launched
today, so thanks for your patience.

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stfu
I have no Ruby skills at all, so I am probably within the "target group". One
suggestion I would have is: It would be cool if there were some kind of
putting-it-all-together-yourself thing at the end of each level. Just before
the summary comes a little level-challenge where one would have to apply all
the steps from the level combined. This would most likely mean going back to
look up certain functions from the challenge, but prep one more for later when
actually doing some coding on my own.

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petercooper
Hang on.. CodeSchool bought tryruby.org?

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patched
Nope, it needed a rewrite. We talked to Andrew who was hosting and helping
maintain it, and he expressed interest in getting help. We did our best to
stay true to _why, keep the same content, and keep it free.

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

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tryke
Has it fallen down already? The rest of codeschool.com works but I get an
"Application Error" when I go to Try Ruby.

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patched
Try now! We were probably doing a deploy, and we've scaled up for the Hacker
news crowd.

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andymboyle
Looks like it's back to running quite slow and not taking some of the commands
I enter.

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patched
Hey Andy.. looks like you were playing through when we hit a spike in
traffic... However, things look like they're back to normal. Let me know if
it's still slow for you.

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danso
Errr....this is not quite right:

> [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}">

~~~
cubicle67

      > [1,2,3].ea­ch{|i| puts i}
      => "123"
      > puts "Hell­o"
      => "123Hello"

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berseroku
Nice work!, the chapter of the Popup.goto "<http://google.com/> doesnt work
for me, any requirements (try in chrome, Firefox) for this module to work?.
Thanks

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berseroku
Duhh, I didn´t see, there is a Popup tab next to the code window

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madebylaw
Great looking redesign! It'd be cool if someone added harder challenges (like
CS algorithms or something) that you could use for programming interviews.

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kaichanvong
Anyone interested in working on a Python version?

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abscondment
Spawn More Overlords!

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rajpaul
i've never programmed ruby before, and i'm really enjoying the tutorial so
far. i'm going to forward it to some non-programmer friends and see what they
think.

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hristov
is ruby really that slow? The things has been trying to reverse my name for
the last 5 min. And it is fake four letter name i gave it. I shudder to think
what would happen if it were my real name.

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jackowayed
Do you genuinely think Ruby is that slow? The server probably got overloaded
because this was on HN and dropped your connection. Ruby running on my phone
can reverse a four-character string in a fraction of a second.

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kaiuhl
I'm pretty sure this was a joke harkening back to the days of _why, when Ruby
actually was fairly slow compared to other interpreted languages of the day.

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wakaflokkaflame
This thing is ass-awful.

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

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xpaulbettsx
Maybe your criticism could be voiced in a more professional and positive way
than "This is ass-awful". Someone spent time to make this and is giving it
away for free, in order to make developers' lives better.

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wakaflokkaflame
"in order to make developers' lives better"...

Get over yourself, dude. You're not championing anyone's cause but your own.

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enneff
You are too cynical. Anyone who produces and gives away free educational tools
is alright in my book. (Unless they're propagandists for an antisocial cause,
I suppose.)

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wakaflokkaflame
This will sound cynical, but darling: there's never such a thing as too
cynical. Unless of course, you scream it from a mountaintop.

