Ruby IDE for Windows 98?

[Bart Braem]

Hello,

In a few weeks I am going to teach a class of 16 year old students how to
program. From scratch. With Ruby. (We have good reasons, I'll explain them
if you like.) With an IDE. (To get rid of the terminal fears.)
Now the problem is that their school runs Windows 98. We love FreeRIDE, it's
a good IDE, but it does not run under Windows 98. And that's not good.
Their teacher is not happy about it any more as ruby seems hard on a
console. And that's a pity.
So, which good Ruby IDE works in Windows 98?

The Ruby Eclipse Development tool seems to have lots of buttons and all
kinds of Java related stuff. We want to be clear for students so that's why
FreeRIDE seemed better...

Do you have any other suggestions? We just want a good IDE that abstracts
the command prompt in Windows 98, so what do you suggest? We are starting
to get desperate, we want to teach those students programming the good
way...

Bart

 

[Martin DeMello]

Hello,

In a few weeks I am going to teach a class of 16 year old students how to
program. From scratch. With Ruby. (We have good reasons, I'll explain them
if you like.) With an IDE. (To get rid of the terminal fears.)

See if Mondrian works in Win98 (not sure, but it's worth a try)

http://www.mondrian-ide.com/

martin

 

[Jeremy McAnally]

SciTe should do what you want I believe; I'd use that because it's
very simple, has syntax highlighting, and will allow you to run from
within it. I'm nto sure about Win98 support though...

Hello,

In a few weeks I am going to teach a class of 16 year old students how to
program. From scratch. With Ruby. (We have good reasons, I'll explain them
if you like.) With an IDE. (To get rid of the terminal fears.)
Now the problem is that their school runs Windows 98. We love FreeRIDE, it's
a good IDE, but it does not run under Windows 98. And that's not good.
Their teacher is not happy about it any more as ruby seems hard on a
console. And that's a pity.
So, which good Ruby IDE works in Windows 98?

The Ruby Eclipse Development tool seems to have lots of buttons and all
kinds of Java related stuff. We want to be clear for students so that's why
FreeRIDE seemed better...

Do you have any other suggestions? We just want a good IDE that abstracts
the command prompt in Windows 98, so what do you suggest? We are starting
to get desperate, we want to teach those students programming the good
way...

Bart

--
My free Ruby e-book:
http://www.humblelittlerubybook.com/book/

My blogs:
http://www.mrneighborly.com/
http://www.rubyinpractice.com/

 

[Detlev Offenbach]

Hello,

In a few weeks I am going to teach a class of 16 year old students how
to program. From scratch. With Ruby. (We have good reasons, I'll
explain them if you like.) With an IDE. (To get rid of the terminal
fears.) Now the problem is that their school runs Windows 98. We love
FreeRIDE, it's a good IDE, but it does not run under Windows 98. And
that's not good. Their teacher is not happy about it any more as ruby
seems hard on a console. And that's a pity.
So, which good Ruby IDE works in Windows 98?

The Ruby Eclipse Development tool seems to have lots of buttons and all
kinds of Java related stuff. We want to be clear for students so that's
why FreeRIDE seemed better...

Do you have any other suggestions? We just want a good IDE that
abstracts the command prompt in Windows 98, so what do you suggest? We
are starting to get desperate, we want to teach those students
programming the good way...

You could try eric4 (currently available as snapshots). It is written in
Python but supports Ruby as well (including debugging support).

Detlev

 

[Joel VanderWerf]

So, which good Ruby IDE works in Windows 98?

Have you tried RDE?

http://homepage2.nifty.com/sakazuki/rde_en/index.html

The web site doesn't clearly say that it is or is not compatible with win98.

 

[Bart Braem]

See if Mondrian works in Win98 (not sure, but it's worth a try)

http://www.mondrian-ide.com/

I'll give it a shot, thanks for the suggestion!

Bart

 

[Olivier]

With Ruby. (We have good reasons, I'll explain them

if you like.) With an IDE. (To get rid of the terminal fears.)

I don't see the need for an IDE in your case. When you say that tou want "To
get rid of the terminal fears", are you talking about the fact of
typing "ruby myprog.rb" in the terminal ?
I think it's essential, for someone who starts learning to program, to
understand the basis of what happens : that source code is not more than a
simple text file, and that it can be run simply by calling the interpreter
with this file. The need for an IDE comes later, with the need of
productivity.

So, what you want is just a text editor with syntax highlighting, and a
terminal by its side
Sorry, I have never developped with windows, so I cannot counsel you for what
editor to choose.

I'm sure your student will surpass their fear of terminals ^^
Good luck with the courses !

 

[Bill Kelly]

I don't see the need for an IDE in your case. When you say that tou want "To
get rid of the terminal fears", are you talking about the fact of
typing "ruby myprog.rb" in the terminal ?
I think it's essential, for someone who starts learning to program, to
understand the basis of what happens : that source code is not more than a
simple text file, and that it can be run simply by calling the interpreter
with this file. The need for an IDE comes later, with the need of
productivity.

Indeed. ~25 years ago when they were teaching us BASIC on
a 40-column display of an APPLE ][ appearing as fuzzy text
on these old TV sets, I don't recall any of us being fearful
that we were dealing with text, without any GUI.

?



Regards,

Bill

 

[Olivier]

I tend to agree with Olivier but that is not my business and I am a

*baaad* teacher, I was great support Olivier, was I not ?

Sure ! As a bad student, I'm glad to be supported by a bad teacher

 

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

I don't see the need for an IDE in your case. When you say that tou
want "To get rid of the terminal fears", are you talking about the
fact of typing "ruby myprog.rb" in the terminal ?
I think it's essential, for someone who starts learning to program,
to understand the basis of what happens : that source code is not
more than a simple text file, and that it can be run simply by
calling the interpreter with this file. The need for an IDE comes
later, with the need of productivity.

Indeed. ~25 years ago when they were teaching us BASIC on
a 40-column display of an APPLE ][ appearing as fuzzy text on these
old TV sets, I don't recall any of us being fearful
that we were dealing with text, without any GUI.

But a *lot* of us who worked with "real computers" refused to have
anything to do with a 40-column screen. Hell, most of the folks who
actually *did* stuff with their Altairs had an ADM-3. That was one of
the truly joyful things about the Commodore 64 -- you could buy a real
color monitor for a reasonable price and not have to mess with RF
modulators, etc..

 

[Reid Thompson]

If you are really desperate a live CD with a Linux distribution
containing
RIDE might be your saver, as this is OT please feel free to contact me
off
list, unfortunately I do not know any life distribution containing
Free Ride
but a little research might be helpful.
I had done it myself if I had a little bit more time, hopefully I get
some
more time tomorrow so contact me if you like.

BTW I posted this to the list just in case somebody happened to know
such a
distribution.
'cause this is a Great List

Cheers
Robert

http://www.ibiblio.org/onebase/onebaselinux.com/About/features/developgo.php

zenlive ( site appears to be down for maint tonight ). I seem to recall
it has dev tools,, not sure which.

getting a multisession cdrom of puppy, putting whatever tools you need
on it, then making copies....
http://www.puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=1

damn small linux can download ruby via a couple of clicks ( internet
connection required though )
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

if the host boxes are powerful && have enough RAM knoppix might viable
http://www.knoppix.org/ there should be a list somewhere on the site
listing contents of the cdrom

dyne:II
http://dev.dynebolic.org/trac.cgi/wiki/SourcePackages

google on variants of
livecd live cd with development tools

there are more ...

 

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

It's pretty easy to make custom live CDs these days, *if* you have
enough RAM and disk space. I actually think there's a Rails LiveCD, and
I'm sure there's a Rails "Virtual Appliance" -- a VMware virtual machine
you can boot up in the free player or server.

 

[Martin DeMello]

By the way, may I suggest a lesson learned from years of trying to teach my
sister programming:

Graphics BEFORE number crunching and text processing.

When I taught my brother to program, I started with text i/o. He had
great fun writing little quiz programs (ask a question, present a few
choices, wait for an answer, repeat), unit conversion programs, etc.
Text is more interactive than graphics that way.

martin

 

[Richard Conroy]

So, which good Ruby IDE works in Windows 98?

Well there is really no IDE for Ruby on Windows, at best
you can get a text-editor-alike that runs code from within it
and captures its output, like SCITE. For windows stuff, I really
like the clean-ness of Notepad++, but I can't get it to execute
Ruby code from within the editor.

RoRed seems nice and simple for Rails stuff, don't know whether
all that Rails stuff gets in the way of it being a simple Ruby
editor, haven't tried it.

Really though, for learning purposes, SCITE is your man.
FreeRIDE seems like such a mess at the moment, and crashes
lots.

As for your Win 98 requirement ... well thats tough.

 

[bgulian]

Komodo by ActiiveState does everything you want plus intellisense.
Works on Windows 98 and one license lets you install a copy on Mac,
Windows, and Linux. It will cost you $29 per student.


..

 

[bgulian]

Oooh, re Komodo. Sorry. ActiveState's product placement has
completely changed since I bought 3.5. 4.0 is now two products, Komodo
Edit (free) and Komodo IDE ($245). Yikes. I cannot vouch for the IDE
at this price. Unless they've greatly revamped and improved the
product then I would probably not buy it at that price. That said,
version 3.5 was a bargain at $29.

Bob

 

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

Oooh, re Komodo. Sorry. ActiveState's product placement has
completely changed since I bought 3.5. 4.0 is now two products, Komodo
Edit (free) and Komodo IDE ($245). Yikes. I cannot vouch for the IDE
at this price. Unless they've greatly revamped and improved the
product then I would probably not buy it at that price. That said,
version 3.5 was a bargain at $29.

Bob

It looks like the free Komodo Editor will do everything the OP needs.
Given that Curt just dropped FreeRide from the One-Click installer, this
might be their best shot, assuming the Komodo Editor will run on Windows
98. Still, I wonder how much RAM they have in their machines if they're
stuck on Windows 98, and whether even if these things "execute", what
their performance will be like?

 

[Gregory Brown]

Graphics are, in my opinion, the most "fun" kind of artistic programming,
and the one where nice results are the simplest to get (and also, one where
advanced programming yields even better results, see for example fractals or
the amazing demos a pascal teacher I had showed us, with a 3D flaming ball
or a waving flag...).

I have to admit, I started with the BASIC drawing commands on a
Commodore Plus/4

 

[Giles Bowkett]

Graphics are, in my opinion, the most "fun" kind of artistic programming,

I have to admit, I started with the BASIC drawing commands on a
Commodore Plus/4

Personally, if I was going to teach somebody programming today, I'd
use either Lego Mindstorms, or one of those "Bobot" kits. (Commands in
BASIC delivered via serial cable.)

 

[Gregory Brown]

Personally, if I was going to teach somebody programming today, I'd
use either Lego Mindstorms, or one of those "Bobot" kits. (Commands in
BASIC delivered via serial cable.)

Mindstorms is a decent approach because you could move from graphical
programming to something like nqc