Ruby is a big magical world with tons of tools, libraries, successfull instructions, and dead-end tutorials. That’s why I will give you highly specific instructions. Please follow them to the letter. Why? Because I’ve been down the road and I can avoid you pain and help you live longer.
MS Windows
NB If you have a WINDOWS computer, I strongly urge you to create a second Linux boot partition.
Many students have traveled this road before you and have the scars to prove it. While (using Turing-complete kind of logic) you can technically do everything with Windows, the road is absolutely full of potholes and pain.
Setting up a Linux partition is easy and very cheap. You need about 14Gig free. You will find the user interface fairly familiar. Overall things will go easier. Here are some instructions that seem to work well:
Mac and Linux
These are the preferred platforms. They both come with Ruby preinstalled and you can lead a happy life without changing anything.
- Do not install RVM or RbEnv. These two tools are to allow a proficient programmer to change what version of Ruby they are using. You will not need them and they will make your life more difficult.
- Do install Homebrew It’s the easiest tool to allow you to install other utilities with the least amount of fuss
- Do install Sublime Text 2. You will need a simple text editor to do this work. If you already have a favorite, fine. But if you don’t Sublime Text 2 is what many people use, and it’s nice and easy
If you didn’t follow my advice and still end up on Windows
- Reconsider! You should go back and install Linux.
- Do not use NOTEPAD. On Windows, Notepad is very weak and will cause you headaches. Of course if you followed my advice above you are not using Windows.