software-development-lessons

Interactive Ruby

This lesson goes over interactive ruby (irb): why and how we use it

You’re working on a coding problem 🧑‍💻.
You need to test and experiment with small snippets of Ruby code quickly and interactively test an idea.
Luckily, you have the IRB shell 🪄✨.
In the IRB shell, you can try out lines of Ruby code and see the results immediately, without the need for writing and running a whole program.
It’s like having a virtual playground where you can experiment and explore the capabilities of Ruby in real-time ⚙️🔬.
With each session in the IRB shell, your skills grow stronger, and you’ll become more confident in your ability to write robust and efficient Ruby code 💪💎.

open a terminal
- locally (Ruby comes preinstalled on macOS)
- replit
- codespace
In a terminal you can enter ruby --version or ruby -v to check version
Make sure you are using the correct version in Ruby Docs
type irb and hit enter
You are now in the irb shell
Play around with ruby.
- Create a variable. name = "ian"
- Print to I/O. puts name
- etc.
Type exit and hit enter to exit irb shell