Build Awesome Command-Line Applications in Ruby 2

Introduction

Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are great for a lot of things; they are typically much kinder to newcomers than the stark glow of a cold, blinking cursor. This comes at a price: you can get only so proficient at a GUI before you have to learn its esoteric keyboard shortcuts. Even then, you will hit the limits of productivity and efficiency. GUIs are notoriously hard to script and automate, and when you can, your script tends not to be very portable.

This is all beside the point; we are software developers, and we write programs. What could be more natural than using code to get our work done? Consider the following command sequence:

> cd ~/Projects/cli
> vi chapter2.md

While these two commands might strike you as opaque, ...