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Ruby

How do you open a command prompt on Windows 7?

Ok, I'm a complete Programming/Ruby noob here so be gentle with me!

I have just been watching the 'Build a simple Ruby on Rails Application' videos and passing all the quizzes so far, but I'm now stuck on the 'Generate a Rails Application' part where I have to create a new directory, then open a command prompt. I can't figure out how to do either of those two things.

I'm using Windows 7.

Please help. I don't think I've missed a video/quiz.

8 Answers

There's a full step-by-step set of instructions on that on Treehouse itself:

http://teamtreehouse.com/library/programming/console-foundations

Thank you Jen. I can't believe I missed that, I just jumped right into the projects. Jeeez lol Thank you so much.

You can hold down the windows key on your keyboard and press the letter R (Win +R) then type "cmd" (without quotes) in the dialog box and hit enter

The Intro to the Console series is for Linux and very helpful for that, but it doesn't cover Windows.

If you want a simple introduction to using the command line on Windows check out: http://cli.learncodethehardway.org/

As a side note I'd recommend you follow the Become a Web Developer learning adventure, as it shows the order the courses were designed in.

That's a really neat shortcut, Gordon, thank you :)

James, I shall definitely follow through with your recommendations. That's awesome.

Thanks guys!

It's my pleasure Casey... Another similar but unrelated shortcut is (Win + E) to open Windows Explorer.

Might I suggest in the long term you switch to a Linux based system (could run a VM within windows) you will find that there are a lot of issues with rails and windows, especially certain gems, paperclip being a prime example.

I agree with Richard. Consider getting something like VMWare Workstation.... It's cheap and flexible... I run Ubuntu, RHEL, Centos & Debian VMs on my Win7, and Win Server 2008 boxes. Inversely, I pun Win via Parallels on my Macs... Additionally, I LOVE "putty for SSH console, and Filezilla for SSH File Transfer, both are free/donation-ware.... You may also want to consider a mac mini (new for $549), or used on CL for $100 to $300 (depending on the Month/Year)...