Ruby on Rails editor in the cloud or How I ran into Cloud9IDE.com :D
Nov 28So tonight I was browsing around the net checking out the Startups from the past couple of years and I was thinking about what app should I start writing since I have my Ruby on Rails environment all ready when I stumble across Cloud9IDE = Ruby on Rails IDE.
Out of curiosity I go on and open the link to the website. Guess what Cloud9IDE is? A fully featured Ruby on Rails IDE in the cloud and it’s FREE to use for open source projects, and it integrates with GitHub, Heroku and a bunch of other stuff.
Free and fully featured Ruby on Rails IDE in the cloud
Since I’m sort of a noob in this all Ruby on Rails stuff I’m not sure if I can switch to working on this platform entirely or if it still misses key features but I’m really excited about the fact that I could basically code from anywhere without having to carry a USB stick or a laptop with me everywhere.
I need to start doing some reading on the Cloud9IDE blog to get more info about this cool “little” app that could prove to be a really useful resource for a lor of Ruby on Rails developers in the entire world.
Not to mention that you can have a bunch of people working on the same project at once (at least from what I understand).
I just tried to link to my GitHub account and get my one and only project from there into Cloud9IDE and it worked like a charm.
I hope that in the future we’ll have such IDE not only for Ruby on Rails for all other programming languages out there so that lazy people like me can get some work done whenever and wherever they are.
And as soon as I wrote this last sentence I looked closely to Cloud9IDE.com and guess what was written there?
“Cloud9 IDE supports several languages with Javascript and HTML/CSS currently being the core ones. We also support Coffeescript, Ruby on Rails, PHP and many others with syntax highlighting with more to follow.”
It’s again time for me to sleep but I’ll study this subject some more tomorrow and come back with more info.
Step 2: Set up GitHub
Nov 08So now that I have a working IDE and Rails installation I wanted to get some kind of version control for my apps and it seems GitHub to be the thing I’m looking for.
Setting up a repository and configuring GitHub security stuff was easy after reading the GitHub help but when I tried to get my app on another machine I ran into trouble.
I’m not familiar with Git itself so it took me a while to figure out what I had to do to download my project on a second machine.
It was really complicated.
Go to the folder where you want your app to be (like C:\Sites\) and do
git clone https://paraddox@github.com/paraddox/FirstRailsApp.git
Replace the github link with your own, and don’t forget to set up in GitHub your SSH keys from both machines before doing this (how to do that is explained in the GitHub help) or this won’t work.
Step 1: What’s the best Ruby on Rails IDE?
Nov 08What’s the best Ruby on Rails IDE for me ?
I’m sure that every respectable developer would do the above search to find the answer.
As I mentioned before I’m a .Net developer so I tend to like having a fully featured Visual Studio style IDE to work in no matter what language I’m coding in so IDEs like Text-Mate, who a lot of people recommend is not for me.
After reading through the first couple of pages of the search I end up with two options:
RubyMine - which I need to pay for or fill out a VERY long form to be able to get it for free for an Open Source Project
and
Aptana Studio 3 which I can get via just 1 click for free. Also this IDE is usable for Python, JavaScript, etc. . (and no, they’re not paying me :) )
So for me the choice is clear since I’m just starting with Ruby on Rails and I want my IDE to be installed as cheap and fast as possible.
Installing Aptana Studio 3 went really fast and smooth so in about 10-15 minutes after I had decided to use it, it was installed and ready to go.
So I go for the classic Hello World but my new and shiny IDE hates me and keeps throwing errors at me saying that I don’t have this and that installed.
After quite a while I figure out the obvious: I don’t have Ruby on Rails installed. I’m like WTF!?
I guess since after/before I install Visual Studio I don’t need to go and install C# I wasn’t expecting that I need to go and install Ruby on Rails separately.
Lucky for me RailsInstaller.org has the exact right thing for me with the stuff that Aptana Studio said that I was missing. 
Now thinking that all was OK I try to create new project and guess what, still not working.
Now I get the following error:
“sh: /c/RailsInstaller/Ruby1.9.2/bin/rails: C:/Projects/railsinstaller/Stage/Ruby1.9.2/bin/ruby.exe: bad interpreter: No such file or directory”
I have Ruby on Rails installed in C:\RailsInstaller so I’m really confused as to where Aptana Studio is getting the other path from.
I did a search for that path in the RailsInstaller folder and I found where this path was mentioned.
So I just edited the first line of this file:
C:\RailsInstaller\Ruby1.9.2\bin\rails
And replaced the location there with the correct path for my ruby executable
#!C:\RailsInstaller\Ruby1.9.2\bin\ruby.exeAnd after this everything went fine and I can start with my development, but instead I’m off to bed.
Good night.
Ruby on Rails and Me
Nov 04Hello there!
It took me quite a few days to get this blog up and running because by the time I managed to get to work on it I usually ended up falling asleep at the computer.
And it also took me a really long time to figure out that I don’t really care about the colors of my Pages and Categories list so please don’t freak out when you see them.
And so on to blogging about the main topic of this blog:
Who am I? -> My name is Sorin Pascu and I’m a Delphi and .Net developer who wants to start learning how to develop with Ruby on Rails.
And why am I blogging about how I start learning about Ruby on Rails? -> Well, this is not the first time I started with Ruby on Rails, It’s the 3rd or 4th time actually but I never actually got far with it because I always forgot everything I learned the previous time and had to restart everything from downloading Ruby. So this time I decided to blog about every step of the way so that if happens that I can’t do anything on Ruby for a while I can just revisit my blog and read all about what I’ve learned. And it’s a blog and not a document in some obscure folder on my hard drive because if I would write this for my eyes only, this would never actually get written.
I’ll also be posting on Twitter stuff I find about Ruby and I think it’s instructive .
Now let’s see where do I begin.