So this weekend I've been working through chapter 12 in Beginning Ruby, which is about building a larger program using the techniques learned so far. The program is building a basic chat bot, and so far I've coded functionality for getting information from a user, switching pronouns and returning the original sentence so that it appears the chat bot is asking a question. I also named the chatbot Loud Mouth.
My understanding is this is similar to how a lot of chat bots work, at a very basic level.
But here's something that's been bothering me. I can't run this kind of program straight from TextMate. I have to run it through IRB in order to collect information the program can manipulate. Is there a way to make it so I can just run it from TextMate, or is there a text editor others use that allows you to do that? I'd prefer just to deal with one open program and I like to run it periodically to see how the changes I've made to the code affect functionality. Or if they break it!
Also, when a user inputs information that is collected with the gets command, where is that information stored? Is it stored at all, or just used immediately by the program and then discarded?
Ha, I forget many non-programmers aren't used to using more than a single app at a time. You'll have to get used to this. There are editors that integrate them all, but they suck.
ReplyDeleteAt minimum I'm running 3-4 tabs in Terminal, a few relevant pages open in Chrome, and TextMate.
gets simply returns that information, you can store it or discard it, it's up to you.