Setting Up Environments

Setting Up Windows (MacOS, Linux) For our First Program

Terminal (also known as “console,” “shell,” and “command line”) is a friend of any Ruby user. To run the programs we’re going to build together, we need some sort of central console, a place from where these programs will be executed. Terminal is the name of this central console.

To be precise, terminal isn’t a hundred percent correct termn, but it’s often used among programmers. They say “run in terminal,” but if we dive deeper, we run all programs by a special kind of software called “shell.” In other words, we send our instructions to the shell and the terminal is just a visual wrapper around this shell. This is where we can configure fonts, colors, copy and paste from our screen, and so on.

Looking ahead, it’s worth mentioning that there are numerous kinds of shells with slightly different flavors. The most popular one is Bash (the name is an acronym for “Bourne-again shell,” a pun on the name of the “Bourne shell” that it replaces). However, some recommend using Zsh with Oh My Zsh flavor (there is no need to install it right now). Zsh is slightly different from the standard one, but it’s much more convenient and gives us more flexibility.

All of the above is valid only for macOS and Linux. The standard shell for Windows is cmd.exe. If we click “Start,” then “Run”, and type cmd.exe: