Redcar initial opinions
Ed Howland
that it is written in Ruby (it seems to be JRuby based [1]). But at
this point it only seems like a very good source editor. I couldn't
get any code execution to run (not sure if I was doing it properly).
And it doesn't appear to have a debugger yet, but it seems to be on
the roadmap.
I like that it has access to snippets and bundles (even TextMate
ones). I'd like to be able to set the theme permanently, but the
preferences window is not yet implemented.
I like how easy it is to install, even given that it is a JRuby app.
Could they make binaries using JRuby-complete?
I like the plug-ins support and how easy it is to get started writing
a plug-in. You can optionally install the RSense plug-in to get
code-completion. (Although, IMO, I've never liked the interaction with
the user. perhaps because BBedit soured me on this. But of course, you
don't have to install it).
I like the tabs support and the native key-bindings. The help could be
improved if they were more platform aware.
I think it might be going too far in supporting additional languages.
But a typical rubyist is going to be switching from Javascript to
ERb/Haml to Yaml to SQL to even C and then back to Ruby, so I guess
that is a needed thing.
Altogether. this is one to watch.
[1] I assume this was done to provide X-Platform support, perhaps via
Swing or some other JRuby UI toolkit. But I'd like
Cheers,
Ed
Ed Howland
http://greenprogrammer.wordpress.com
http://twitter.com/ed_howland