On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 12:20 PM, Iain Davis > It does, but it doesn't appeal to the audience that Ed may be thinking > of. That audience is going to be drawn in much more quickly if they > can download a single package that a) includes both ruby and an IDE (a > low-footprint one similar to IDLE will do), b) does not require any > configuration c) does not require installation of other products > either before or after installation of the package to get started. > > That is, I should be able to download, run an installer, click on a > icon, and starting typing ruby code into an editor that can execute > the ruby code. :) > > Python is very accessible that way. I had a professor in college who > is a big fan of Python, he'd use it for teaching in many of his > courses. The ability to download a single installer, run it, and get > going in IDLE made that possible. > > Iain >
I agree with Iain, here. I'm not trying to preach to the converted. Or to further fan the flames in the editor/IDE wars. But lot's of universities have settled on Python for just that reason: jump in simplicity. I think that irb is nice. wirble even nicer. ruby-debug is great. But these are all separate tools that you have to install (except for irb). And I agree with Iain that it should have a low footprint. I checked out arcadia, but it blew on a missing (non-obvious) dependency But it sounds like it might fit the bill, being X-platform and based on Ruby/Tk. As far as Tk goes. I am not particularly married to any one windowing toolkit. Would wx, gtk or qt be a better fit, and still be X-platform? I think we should target Windows, Linux and Mac. Tk caught my eye because IDLE is written in it (Tkinter) and makes it a breeze to create other desktop type apps in Python. I know this sort of thing has been tried before. Scite, FXruby etc. But since they have fallen (or nearly so) the radar, perhaps a fresh approach is needed. Cheers, Ed Ed Howland http://greenprogrammer.wordpress.com http://twitter.com/ed_howland -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-t...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en.
