I'm not a Ruby programmer, so I currently only look at Ruby-related things when I need to (e.g. to run some useful package), thus these notes might be inaccurate or unhelpful.

One thing about Ruby is all the interesting learning material, for the language itself and for Rails. Here are some that I've come across so far:

• Ruby Koans - seems to be based on TDD
• why's (poignant) guide to ruby - comic book-based guide (last time I checked it had not been updated lately; the original author abandoned it, so )

From a quick search in 2013-04, here are some interactive console options:

• Pry
  • Didn't work on Windows on the first try
• https://github.com/cldwalker/ripl
  • or possibly irb with https://github.com/cldwalkerm/bond
  • I was not able to quickly get ripl or bond working on Windows.

Note on Linux: if readline keyboard shortcuts are wrong, check ~/.inputrc; it should contain set editing-mode emacs or set editing-mode vi depending on your preference.

Another option seems to be built in (cf. http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2007/05/07/irb-tab-completion/):

irb -r irb/completion

I have no idea why this wouldn't be the default. On Windows, it may be simplest to just add that option to the shortcut. Should also be able to add the line require 'irb/completion' to ~/.irbrc (not sure where that's supposed to be on Windows).

It seems that the usual suggestion in the Ruby community is to install Ruby itself using the system package manager (possibly ruby-full, then install RubyGems manually and use it to install other Ruby packages.

RVM may also be recommended, depending on the situation.

References:

• http://superuser.com/questions/178083/install-packages-through-apt-get-or-gem
• http://castilho.biz/blog/2010/05/08/how-to-install-ruby-on-rails-on-ubuntu-10-04-lucid-lynx/
• http://docs.rubygems.org/read/chapter/14#page62