What do you use to write Ruby code... and why?

[David Mullet]

To get the ball rolling here...

Most of my development is done on Windows, and involves client-side/
desktop scripts and applications. No Rails projects.

For a year or two, I used SciTE, the Scintilla text editor that had
been included with the old One-Click Installer.

For smaller projects, I now use Notepad++. It's free, open source,
lightweight and fast. But I believe it is Windows-only.

For larger projects, I use NetBeans, which is neither lightweight nor
fast. But I like the code browser and Rake integration.

On my Mac, I use TextMate. Because I've only had my MacBook Pro for a
few months and all the cool kids use TextMate. But I haven't really
made the most of it yet.

And what editors/IDEs do you currently use for crafting your Ruby
code?

David

http://rubyonwindows.blogspot.com

[Ed Howland]

Hi David,

In my past life I used Vim. But I started out in Emacs under Unix. Vim
has colorized syntax highlighting and can do many of the features of
larger full blown IDEs. GVim even works under MS-Windows. There is
also vim-app[1] for a gui version on Mac OS/X. I personally don't use
the gui versions of vi, because I just find the key bindings so
natural to use.

However, lately, first on Linuc with a pimped out gEdit and now on the
Mac with Textmate, I've grown to love the natural feel of these
editors. There is less impedance mismatch between coding and editing
(which can be opposing factors at times).

Cheers
Ed

[1] Although could not install this via ports. Anyone have a better method?

Ed Howland
http://greenprogrammer.wordpress.com
http://twitter.com/ed_howland

[spncrgr]

Hi All!!

As a Ruby newbie, this is a topic close to my heart. I'm new to
programming in general as well, so a good IDE was very important to
me. So thanks for this group because when I first started I felt like
I was just blindly throwing a dart and whichever IDE it hit was the
one I was going to use :)

This has been my experience thus far:
I first started learning Ruby on Windows but quickly switched to a
Mac. For a long time though, my favorite IDE on Windows has been
UltraEdit (I use UEStudio which is a beefed up version) http://www.ultraedit.com.
UE has built in code folding, syntax highlighting, etc. for Ruby and
all of the other more common languages. IMHO, they've really stepped
up their game in recent versions.

On Mac:
I started with Eclipse but soon found that it was overwhelming for
someone like me who was new to the programming world.

I moved from that to NetBeans which I really liked. I'd probably
still be using that if I hadn't found my current IDE:

RubyMine!! (http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby) I absolutely love this
IDE. Yehuda K. recommended I stop by their booth at this year's
RailsConf and I'm glad I did. This IDE has everything I need. For
me, I feel like it's the first IDE developed specifically for Ruby and
Rails as opposed to a system that's been re-purposed. It has full
support for Ruby and Rails, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Cucumber, Git, SVN,
RVM and I'm sure more that I don't even know about yet!

Licensing for RubyMine is $99 for companies and individuals and free
for open source projects. They have a 30-day trial available too.
There's also early development versions available for the next major
release.

I highly recommend RubyMine. As a plus, it's available for Win, Mac,
and Linux.


That's my 2 cents :)
-Spencer

[Iain E. Davis]

On Aug 29, 10:15 am, David Mullet wrote:
> And what editors/IDEs do you currently use for crafting your Ruby
> code?

I'm extremely new to Ruby... The little pieces of ruby I've written
I've been doing in the Windows version of Emacs (with nXhtml). Emacs
because I'm familiar with it and I feel "close to the files/code" with
Emacs. I use it on windows, because that is my "primary" environment.
Currently, I've using it to edit code that actually lives and is
executed on my linux box...Ruby (and Rails) seemed better behaved in
that environment. nXhtml makes Emacs more aware of things like PHP,
Ruby, HTML, etc. including understanding when there are mixtures (e.g.
PHP and HTML in the same file, Ruby and HTML in the same file, etc.).

[Markus]

Hi,

I'm using vim FTW, I don't know, it's an addiction I just can't get
rid of. I learned it pre millennium on Linux, nowadays I'm mostly
working on Windows, but the Linux spirit is definitely no dead. I'm
not using cygwin but there's always one or two puttys open into the
"real world".

I tried lots of IDEs in the past (for Ruby and other Stuff), but
always find this or that stuff lacking. One notably exception is when
I work with Java: the ecosystem is so crazy big, I just can't handle
that stuff without a IDE properly (that changed a but with maven,
still ...).

About nearly ten years ago I was somewhat more involved into the PHP
project (not developing, just fixing casual bugs) and also a little
bit in the php-gtk port. I remember getting in contact with the lead
developer of it and drafting some stuff and even started prototype
coding (remember those were the PHP4 days ...) for an IDE. Anyway, I
started with a ****-load of ambition but was ultimately pushed back
due the many limits I encountered. Either by PHP4 itself, problems
with the GTK port, lack of system integration, etc.

I sometimes consider writing an IDE to be the equivalent of writing a
CMS for the Web: nearly everyone tried this once in his live (or
multiple times?), but 99% don't finish or produce anything real
usable; kind a "been there, done that"-thing ;-)

Now ten years later I wouldn't even remotely consider writing
something like that in PHP. Ruby? I'm not sure. I guess I'll spectate
and see if someone can pull strings seriously together.

For my part, the top thing for writing anything for the desktop is to
have a good GUI thing. With that I mean definitely not Tk anywhere in
reach (just by looking at it I get eye cancer instantly). What's a
good GUI? Well, I only know what it means to me and that's mostly
system integration. Respecting DPI settings, colors, using native
system dialogs (open file, choose dir, etc.). Basically that's the
fear for someone working on Windows having seen quite some GUI ports
which just look horribly besides what I'm used to under Windows. GTK+
"can" look nice. QT to me looks nice. Still, as a Windows user I
sometimes think: why does this UI has to look different on my system.
I don't want the Windows GUI being ported to anywhere, but don't like
to loose it either.

Bad example: GTK+ open file dialog under Windows. At least the ones
I've seen just make me want to run.I hacked a bit on the ZeroRadiant
(the ol' Quake 3 mapping tool written in C++) earlier this year. It's
using GTK+ and I knew I'm not that wrong with my judgment: it
contained special Win32 codepaths for exactly this: the file open
dialogs. Because the GTK+ dialog, maybe it's an outdated DLL, I don't
know, simply has no idea what customizations I've on XP or W7, how I
want the dialog size, which Favorites I've on my system to access my
important parts fast, etc.

Unfortunately good Windows integration doesn't make it a good UI per
se and even then a Ruby binding is something else altogether.

Uh well, that mail turned out to be longer then I expected it ...

regards,
- Markus

[Ed Howland]

Hi again Markus,

I think your comments here are invaluable. I think writing an IDE (or
even just a cool editor) is a big task. Probably outside any one
person's scope. But I tend to think it might be possible for a
dedicated team of talented devs. Anyway I'd like to be part of such a
team. And I don't want a project that merely duplicates exiting
functionality but in the Ruby environment. I'd like something elegant,
idiomatic and fun.

Have you looked at Shoes? AFAIK, it uses system common dialogs, like
file open etc.

Cheers,
Ed

Ed Howland
http://greenprogrammer.wordpress.com
http://twitter.com/ed_howland