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comp.lang.ruby

IDEA: Ruby "offline" CD / DVD

Stian Haklev

3/14/2007 8:15:00 AM

Hi all. I hope this is the appropriate place to post my idea. I have
been using Ruby on and off for two years now, but especially lately as I
have been implementing some personal projects, and modifying some Rails
apps for our intranet, and I am thoroughly enjoying it.

Currently I am working for an NGO in Indonesia (I'm Norwegian, studying
in Canada), and although we have a decent internet connection in the
office, I do most of my coding at home in the evenings - without
internet. And I have come to realize how much we depend on being
online... not for the actual coding, but for all that surrounds it,
whether it's looking up a library reference, downloading a new gem,
googling an error message, downloading some source code to see how
somebody else solved this problem. Often I come to a block, and I have
to wait till the next morning before I can move on. I've partly solved
this by pre-downloading a number of good resources, whether PDFs or even
wgetting small sites that I might want to refer to.

Internet is very expensive and slow in Indonesia, and almost nobody have
it at home. I've met a bunch of CS students at the local Linux
usergroup, and I was saddened to see how little they knew of basic stuff
(whether Linux or programming, but at least they came, which is a great
start). I never did CS, but I've been playing around with computers
since I was 10. I firmly believe that having access to your own
computer, and being able to sit up all night trying stuff out is the
only real way of learning - all kinds of courses can help, but they are
never enough.

So I started thinking about producing some kind of a "Ruby ++" CD that
could be sold really cheaply or handed out for free here and in other
places. It would obviously contain some kind of installer/distribution
of Ruby for most platforms (Win/Linux/Mac), but in addition some of the
following:

- a huge collection of gems - how big are all the gems together? enough
for a DVD? or only the most useful ones
- a bunch of big Ruby and RoR apps from Rubyforge etc
- Rubybooks (like in the rubydoc bundle)
- Functional and searchable webdumps of things like: the 10-20 most
prolific Ruby bloggers, the Ruby-lang mailing list, Ruby quiz, etc

(I'd personally also like to sneak in a pdf book about svn and maybe a
few other tools as well).

Previously I experimented a lot with getting offline access to Wikipedia
dumps that are zipped without unzipping them first. I made a simple
Ruby+webrick server that unzips and serves files on demand. It turned
out to be way too slow for huge Wikipedia files (not Ruby but calling
7zip through the backtick), so someone from Spanish Wikipedia wrote an
integrated server/7zip that only opens the 7z file once, and caches the
index. Yesterday I wrote a first mockup of a Ruby script that accepts a
URL, runs wget following all links in subdirectories, then scans all
HTML/txt etc files with Ferret, and zips it all up to a format that is
instantly usable. This way we could put a lot of documentation on the CD
and have instantly useable - and searchable!

Anyway, I'm throwing this out there, and wondering if it's a good idea,
if you have any inputs etc. It might be hard to imagine how it is to be
learning Ruby with no or almost no access to the network, but I can tell
you that I would certainly pick up such a CD/DVD in a heartbeat, and I
think it would be really useful. I'd love nothing more than having a
generation of young creative minds in Indonesia (and other places)
growing up churning out beautiful Ruby code! (This idea could obviously
be extended to covering other programming languages etc, but I'm a Ruby
guy). Also distribution has to be thought of, but there are lots of user
groups for Ruby/Ubuntu/Linux etc in Indonesia. And we could put it up as
an ISO, so other user groups in other countries could distribute it as
they saw fit.

Stian
(ps please cc to my email since I might not be able to check this list
often)

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-....
25 Answers

David and Sharon Phillips

3/14/2007 9:23:00 AM

0

For me personally, this is a great idea. Even having just a
downloadable image that can be burnt and taken would be handy.

At work I live behind a big enterprisey firewall and do most of my
Ruby work on a 'secret' server (one I found that was no longer in
use ;-) that has no internet connection at all. Setting things up on
this has been an absolute pain. Being able to slip in a CD would be
magic.

Cheers,
Dave

On 14/03/2007, at 7:15 PM, Stian Haklev wrote:

> Hi all. I hope this is the appropriate place to post my idea. I have
> been using Ruby on and off for two years now, but especially lately
> as I
> have been implementing some personal projects, and modifying some
> Rails
> apps for our intranet, and I am thoroughly enjoying it.
>
> Currently I am working for an NGO in Indonesia (I'm Norwegian,
> studying
> in Canada), and although we have a decent internet connection in the
> office, I do most of my coding at home in the evenings - without
> internet. And I have come to realize how much we depend on being
> online... not for the actual coding, but for all that surrounds it,
> whether it's looking up a library reference, downloading a new gem,
> googling an error message, downloading some source code to see how
> somebody else solved this problem. Often I come to a block, and I have
> to wait till the next morning before I can move on. I've partly solved
> this by pre-downloading a number of good resources, whether PDFs or
> even
> wgetting small sites that I might want to refer to.
>
> Internet is very expensive and slow in Indonesia, and almost nobody
> have
> it at home. I've met a bunch of CS students at the local Linux
> usergroup, and I was saddened to see how little they knew of basic
> stuff
> (whether Linux or programming, but at least they came, which is a
> great
> start). I never did CS, but I've been playing around with computers
> since I was 10. I firmly believe that having access to your own
> computer, and being able to sit up all night trying stuff out is the
> only real way of learning - all kinds of courses can help, but they
> are
> never enough.
>
> So I started thinking about producing some kind of a "Ruby ++" CD that
> could be sold really cheaply or handed out for free here and in other
> places. It would obviously contain some kind of installer/distribution
> of Ruby for most platforms (Win/Linux/Mac), but in addition some of
> the
> following:
>
> - a huge collection of gems - how big are all the gems together?
> enough
> for a DVD? or only the most useful ones
> - a bunch of big Ruby and RoR apps from Rubyforge etc
> - Rubybooks (like in the rubydoc bundle)
> - Functional and searchable webdumps of things like: the 10-20 most
> prolific Ruby bloggers, the Ruby-lang mailing list, Ruby quiz, etc
>
> (I'd personally also like to sneak in a pdf book about svn and maybe a
> few other tools as well).
>
> Previously I experimented a lot with getting offline access to
> Wikipedia
> dumps that are zipped without unzipping them first. I made a simple
> Ruby+webrick server that unzips and serves files on demand. It turned
> out to be way too slow for huge Wikipedia files (not Ruby but calling
> 7zip through the backtick), so someone from Spanish Wikipedia wrote an
> integrated server/7zip that only opens the 7z file once, and caches
> the
> index. Yesterday I wrote a first mockup of a Ruby script that
> accepts a
> URL, runs wget following all links in subdirectories, then scans all
> HTML/txt etc files with Ferret, and zips it all up to a format that is
> instantly usable. This way we could put a lot of documentation on
> the CD
> and have instantly useable - and searchable!
>
> Anyway, I'm throwing this out there, and wondering if it's a good
> idea,
> if you have any inputs etc. It might be hard to imagine how it is
> to be
> learning Ruby with no or almost no access to the network, but I can
> tell
> you that I would certainly pick up such a CD/DVD in a heartbeat, and I
> think it would be really useful. I'd love nothing more than having a
> generation of young creative minds in Indonesia (and other places)
> growing up churning out beautiful Ruby code! (This idea could
> obviously
> be extended to covering other programming languages etc, but I'm a
> Ruby
> guy). Also distribution has to be thought of, but there are lots of
> user
> groups for Ruby/Ubuntu/Linux etc in Indonesia. And we could put it
> up as
> an ISO, so other user groups in other countries could distribute it as
> they saw fit.
>
> Stian
> (ps please cc to my email since I might not be able to check this list
> often)
>
> --
> Posted via http://www.ruby-....
>

Eleanor McHugh

3/14/2007 11:41:00 AM

0

On 14 Mar 2007, at 08:15, Stian Haklev wrote:
> Anyway, I'm throwing this out there, and wondering if it's a good
> idea,
> if you have any inputs etc. It might be hard to imagine how it is
> to be
> learning Ruby with no or almost no access to the network, but I can
> tell
> you that I would certainly pick up such a CD/DVD in a heartbeat, and I
> think it would be really useful. I'd love nothing more than having a
> generation of young creative minds in Indonesia (and other places)
> growing up churning out beautiful Ruby code! (This idea could
> obviously
> be extended to covering other programming languages etc, but I'm a
> Ruby
> guy). Also distribution has to be thought of, but there are lots of
> user
> groups for Ruby/Ubuntu/Linux etc in Indonesia. And we could put it
> up as
> an ISO, so other user groups in other countries could distribute it as
> they saw fit.

This sounds like a brilliant idea. Getting a useful Ruby distro into
the hands of as many programmers as possible would be really good for
the growth of the community. If it could be configured so it all ran
from the CD with Windows/MacOS X/*NIX that would be even better - the
less that needs to be installed, the more that people would be
willing to experiment.

Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
----
raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason

SonOfLilit

3/14/2007 12:07:00 PM

0

SoC material perhaps?

On 3/14/07, Eleanor McHugh <eleanor@games-with-brains.com> wrote:
> On 14 Mar 2007, at 08:15, Stian Haklev wrote:
> > Anyway, I'm throwing this out there, and wondering if it's a good
> > idea,
> > if you have any inputs etc. It might be hard to imagine how it is
> > to be
> > learning Ruby with no or almost no access to the network, but I can
> > tell
> > you that I would certainly pick up such a CD/DVD in a heartbeat, and I
> > think it would be really useful. I'd love nothing more than having a
> > generation of young creative minds in Indonesia (and other places)
> > growing up churning out beautiful Ruby code! (This idea could
> > obviously
> > be extended to covering other programming languages etc, but I'm a
> > Ruby
> > guy). Also distribution has to be thought of, but there are lots of
> > user
> > groups for Ruby/Ubuntu/Linux etc in Indonesia. And we could put it
> > up as
> > an ISO, so other user groups in other countries could distribute it as
> > they saw fit.
>
> This sounds like a brilliant idea. Getting a useful Ruby distro into
> the hands of as many programmers as possible would be really good for
> the growth of the community. If it could be configured so it all ran
> from the CD with Windows/MacOS X/*NIX that would be even better - the
> less that needs to be installed, the more that people would be
> willing to experiment.
>
> Ellie
>
> Eleanor McHugh
> Games With Brains
> ----
> raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason
>
>
>
>

Robert Dober

3/14/2007 12:25:00 PM

0

A brilliant idea, but you might want to dream even further.
OpenBSD, Linux running on pendrives nowadays, pendrives becoming
cheaper and cheaper, why not try to come up with the "Dedicated Ruby
Newby pendrive distribution" ?
BTW the pendrive and the CD/DVD might fit together very nicely :)

Cheers
Robert

Alex Young

3/14/2007 12:31:00 PM

0

Robert Dober wrote:
> A brilliant idea, but you might want to dream even further.
> OpenBSD, Linux running on pendrives nowadays, pendrives becoming
> cheaper and cheaper, why not try to come up with the "Dedicated Ruby
> Newby pendrive distribution" ?
> BTW the pendrive and the CD/DVD might fit together very nicely :)
This is somewhat relevant:

http://railsl...

--
Alex

Eleanor McHugh

3/14/2007 1:25:00 PM

0

On 14 Mar 2007, at 12:25, Robert Dober wrote:
> A brilliant idea, but you might want to dream even further.
> OpenBSD, Linux running on pendrives nowadays, pendrives becoming
> cheaper and cheaper, why not try to come up with the "Dedicated Ruby
> Newby pendrive distribution" ?
> BTW the pendrive and the CD/DVD might fit together very nicely :)

Personally I'd be more interested in targeting the OLPC $100 laptop,
but that's a whole different magnitude of project ;)

Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
----
raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

3/14/2007 3:03:00 PM

0

Eleanor McHugh wrote:
> On 14 Mar 2007, at 12:25, Robert Dober wrote:
>> A brilliant idea, but you might want to dream even further.
>> OpenBSD, Linux running on pendrives nowadays, pendrives becoming
>> cheaper and cheaper, why not try to come up with the "Dedicated Ruby
>> Newby pendrive distribution" ?
>> BTW the pendrive and the CD/DVD might fit together very nicely :)
>
> Personally I'd be more interested in targeting the OLPC $100 laptop,
> but that's a whole different magnitude of project ;)
I've forgotten where it is, but you can actually download and run a
"virtual" OLPC, and presumably there's a development kit close by if in
fact one is needed. One Ruby Per Child? Why not?


--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, FBG, AB, PTA, PGS, MS, MNLP, NST, ACMC(P)
http://borasky-research.blo...

If God had meant for carrots to be eaten cooked, He would have given rabbits fire.

Eleanor McHugh

3/14/2007 3:19:00 PM

0

On 14 Mar 2007, at 15:02, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> Eleanor McHugh wrote:
>> Personally I'd be more interested in targeting the OLPC $100
>> laptop, but that's a whole different magnitude of project ;)
> I've forgotten where it is, but you can actually download and run a
> "virtual" OLPC, and presumably there's a development kit close by
> if in fact one is needed. One Ruby Per Child? Why not?

My thought exactly. Imagine a world in which 100 million teenagers
from the developing world all had the benefit of Ruby. Not that I
object to it being a python-based system right now, but I reckon
Ruby's a subtly more disruptive technology and I'd love to see
teenagers in the developing world experience the same explosion of
creativity that we in the developed world did back in the 1980s :)


Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
----
raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

3/14/2007 5:05:00 PM

0

Eleanor McHugh wrote:
> My thought exactly. Imagine a world in which 100 million teenagers
> from the developing world all had the benefit of Ruby. Not that I
> object to it being a python-based system right now, but I reckon
> Ruby's a subtly more disruptive technology and I'd love to see
> teenagers in the developing world experience the same explosion of
> creativity that we in the developed world did back in the 1980s :)
Well, when *I* was a teenager, the explosions of creativity were sparked
by magnetic core memory, germanium transistors, FORTRAN and COBOL. :)
But seriously:

1. What sort of explosions of creativity were there in the 1980s? I
spent almost precisely that decade at Floating Point Systems, using
FORTRAN and FPS microcode to do hard-core number crunching. The
explosions of creativity I'm familiar with have to do with vector and
parallel architectures and just the beginning hints of things like RISC
and super-scalar. Back then, I couldn't have predicted that the Xeon and
AMD64 and hypervisors would dominate the landscape. They told me I'd
have a Cray on my desktop, but I certainly didn't anticipate that it
would also do email and word processing, or that I'd be able to talk to
colleagues all over the world for free on it.

2. What's disruptive about Ruby? It seems to me perfectly mainstream --
imperative, object oriented, dynamic, reasonable block-structured
syntax, agile, pragmatic, human-centric, etc. Disruptive would be
Scheme, FORTH, Haskell or Erlang.

--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, FBG, AB, PTA, PGS, MS, MNLP, NST, ACMC(P)
http://borasky-research.blo...

If God had meant for carrots to be eaten cooked, He would have given rabbits fire.

Martin DeMello

3/14/2007 5:43:00 PM

0

On 3/14/07, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:
>
> 2. What's disruptive about Ruby? It seems to me perfectly mainstream --
> imperative, object oriented, dynamic, reasonable block-structured
> syntax, agile, pragmatic, human-centric, etc. Disruptive would be
> Scheme, FORTH, Haskell or Erlang.

I've noticed that Ruby is a very "gateway drug" sort of language :) It
has enough (and well-integrated enough) features from mind-expanding
languages that it encourages its users to go out and try them.

m.