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Comment by tsumnia | Hacker News Reader

While others are complaining about all the up front set up; this is actually something I like. Base tutorials always seem to be missing that 'something' that takes what you've learned and turns it into a real world application.

Even if its not step one, I would prefer more tutorials to have a full fledged 'Getting Set Up' section; even if it becomes arbitrary. It makes sure everyone can get on the same page no matter where they come from.

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Exactly my thoughts. When I just started programming, there were so many tutorials I started on rails, django, and various other frameworks that I couldn't get to work the same way as in the tutorial. This was very important to me when I just started programming because if my results didn't match exactly that of the tutorials, I would not want to continue further since I am not sure if I am doing everything right.

One of the better tutorials I have found that takes extra care in making sure you are doing everything right, is the famous rails tutorial found here: http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book

I agree, and in this case it's setting up a very consistent environment that will be almost exactly the same as the one he's going to be using.

Additionally, these are the actual procedures you could use to set up a very real and serious tool. I'm loving this!

This is an excellent idea and the instructions almost worked as is even on an old windows vista machine (with the exception I had to download PuTTY, but the messages were very intuitive. What is missing is perhaps a comments page, if nothing else to thank the author.

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