Wow, what a convoluted installation process! Nevertheless, I managed to get them installed. However, I still have a couple beginner’s questions:
Are Ruby and Rails programs that I can or should turn and off, or do they just run continuously in the background? And if I use them with Bootstrap, does that mean I have to install them online, too, or do I just use them to develop my CSS, then publish some file(s) online?
Thanks.
Ruby comes installed by default on OSX. You shouldn’t have needed to do much of anything. What instructions did you follow?
No turning on or off necessary. Rails may run continuously if you run the rails server command and don’t end it.
Not sure what you mean here. If you are trying to develop a Rails app you will need a server of some sort to deploy too. However, a Rails app is a completely different beast than HTML, CSS, or even PHP.
What are you trying to accomplish? Perhaps we could provide more help if we know what you want to do with Ruby/Rails. 
It’s a long story. 
While exploring Bootstrap, I learned about CSS “mixins.” They look cool, but I discovered I can’t do anything with them unless I install SASS (or LESS?). But first you have to install Ruby. And before you install Ruby, you have to install the “command line tools.” I think I wound up installing two or three other programs as well.
Yes, Ruby comes pre-installed on Mac. But I read that some people discourage using it, apparently because it’s for “system use.” So I downloaded one of two Ruby versions that are popularly recommended.
To make a long story a little shorter, I finally got everything installed, except perhaps for LASS. The installation process is just too bizarre; I got tired of installing Software A to make Software B work, then, Software X to make Software Z work.
But one more question - can you tell me how to command Terminal to end Rails? It seems to be hung up on Rails now, and I can’t type in other commands. Thanks.
Just press Ctrl-C to shut it down.
I’m going to mini-rant (not at you!) for a moment. Ignore all those people. Seriously. Ignore them. 
The system Ruby would have been more than sufficient for utilizing SASS or LESS. A lot of Ruby/Rails users are insistent that you need ALL of those other tools to get started and its really just a huge stumblingblock to learning. They’re not necessary.
</ mini-rant>
If you are just trying to use SASS you don’t even need to have Rails installed. Unless, of course, you are trying to learn Rails.
Basically what you need to do if you want to take advantage of SASS is write your SASS file to your liking and then you will open the terminal and use the command line to compile the SASS file into plain ol’ CSS.
> sass file.sass file.css
I think that’s the correct way.
And if you want to bypass Ruby, the command line, and all of this other stuff you could just utilize an editor that does the work for you. Take a look at http://sass-lang.com/install there is a list of apps that can do this for you. Though it’s a little pricely, I have heard good things about http://incident57.com/codekit/
Hopefully that helps a little. 
Wow, I wish I had consulted you before Google.
I am thinking of taking some time to learn a little Ruby some day. It sounds like it’s a lot harder than PHP - which is hard enough for me - but some programmers seem to think Ruby might be a better choice as the Internet continues to evolve.
In your quest to learn Ruby, I highly recommend these resources
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