Thinking on teaching code/Rails

thoughts.rb

##############
# Lesson file
##############

title "Getting started with Rails"
description "A quick tutorial to run you through a basic Rails application"

steps %w {
  install.rb
  app.rb
  setup.rb
  generate.rb
  launch.rb
  edit.rb
}

###########
# Step file
###########

title "Generate a controller"
instructions "To generate a controller in Rails, you need to... etc."  # or these could be loaded from a file optionally

# These requirements outline what will be required to get the "Next" button to light up
# Could be files or something else.  Haven't figured all this out yet.
requirement do
  tip "Run rails g controller pages index"
  require_file "app/controllers/pages_controller.rb"
  require_file "app/views/pages/index.html.erb"
end

##########################
# Step file requiring code
##########################

title "Strftime"
instructions "Strftime is a great tool..."

# These requirements outline what will be required to get the "Next" button to light up
# Could be files or something else.  Haven't figured all this out yet.
requirement do
  tip "Get the current time with Time.now and assign it to a variable named time"

  irb do
    code "time = Time.now"  # ideally we'd be able to monitor local state for things but would have to figure that out
  end
end

requirement do
  tip "Print out the time variable like this: 03/12/2012 03:22:13"

  irb do
    code "puts time.strftime('%D %T')"
  end
end