Well we cant have that now can we. Its really easy to get what you need to play with Ruby on your computer. For the Mac users we can take a look at locomotive. With locomotive you do not have to worry about compiling source code or any crazy command line non-sense, just download the .dmg, extract it and run the application. And although the crowd at RailsConf has always been predominantly Mac users, fear not you Windows bound souls there is a very easy solution for you. On the windows pc you can use the Instant Rails Installer. This little beuaty will install ruby, rails, the scite editor and even help docs that include Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide.

From there the steps differ a little bit, but the process is the same. Create a new site/application, write some code, start a server and visit the site in a browser.

Both of these create a self contained set of files so you can get rid of them if you like. So play a little. Open your mind. And if that still seems like to much work then Try Ruby From Your Browser and dont install anything at all.