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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.

I have a friend who knows some HTML and wants to start programming. I sent him this and the JavaScript variant (on HN recently) so he can see if either language looks less scary to him.

Personally, I love browser based language introductions. On OS X for example, many Rubyists will tell you to install brew or rvm or rbenv, then a more recent Ruby (1.9.2 or 1.9.3 or...), then TextMate or more stuff for vim, ...

I use tools like http://jsbin.com/ and http://jsfiddle.net/ a lot. But it's a different kettle of fish for JavaScript / HTML / CSS, since they can be a lot more practical, running directly in the browser.

It's not hard, but it's another barrier to entry.

On a personal note, I'd much rather try a language in a browser, then download it if I like it.

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

It's not the 'try' aspect that's useful, it's the interactive tutorial that comes with it that's engaging

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.

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>  <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>

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

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

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.

Hang on.. CodeSchool bought tryruby.org?

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

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

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

Oh good, it's back! Thanks.

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

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.

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}">

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

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

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

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

Anyone interested in working on a Python version?

Spawn More Overlords!

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's just latency to the server + the server not being designed for concurrent traffic. Ruby is inherently slower than many interpreted languages, but its combination of power and readability sets it apart, IMHO.

λ time ruby -e0

real 0m0.004s user 0m0.002s sys 0m0.001s

Your shell prompt is a lambda? I wasn't aware that was possible with most terminal emulators.

zsh on OSX can do it.

Not only there, but zsh in urxvt on Arch Linux is able to do it too - I guess it's a general feature of zsh, then?

I don't think it has to do with the shell. It should only depend on whether your terminal emulator can handle unicode. I'm using Bash on OSX in this screenshot, but it was easy to switch: http://cl.ly/Ab4B

I assure you, ruby is not actually that slow. It's also a dynamic interpreter...not like running your own ruby (which would be waayyyy faster)

Sorry for the slowness. We were having issues with traffic earlier that didn't have much to do with Ruby, but it should be MUCH faster now. Let us know if you run into any other issues.

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

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.

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

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

I've been using Ruby for many years now, but I wish I had discovered it much earlier. Something like this would have made that more likely.

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.)

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

Which cause is that? I didn't write tryruby.org