From: Jan Sabbe <jan.sabbe@...>
Date: 2004-08-28T19:55:33+09:00
Subject: Re: Typos (Was: performance comparison)

Gavin Sinclair wrote:
>
> Programming Java without a *really* good IDE is awful.  Programming
> Java with one is bliss (except for the Java bit, which brings the
> whole experience back to "bearable").
> 
> Programming Ruby without a really good IDE is quite doable.  There are
> certainly difficult aspects to it (especially project structure), and
> your point about losing flow with minor things is well made.
> 
> Whenever there's a complex-ish piece of Ruby code I have to do (i.e.
> susceptible to subtle mistakes and/or unlikely to work first time), I
> develop it in IRB.  Just copy and paste the code into IRB, set up some
> context (initial data), and run and edit until it works.  It then gets
> copied into the program with confidence.  That only feels like one
> "cycle" - an illusion, perhaps, but a useful one.
> 

Heh, that's funny, I mostly do the exact same thing :-) But I whished 
there was better support for IRB in the ruby ides/text-editors. Copying 
from/to irb isn't always as smooth as possible. It would be nice if this 
happened more easily and more automatically.

In the same way, I tend to do test cases. Fire up irb, setting up test 
data, and writing a few tests. I think there is still some nice 
automatisations left here, to actually "convert" this irb log into a 
test case.

It seems to me that an ide for dynamically languages pretty much copies 
what an ide for a statically language does. So you get those rather 
artifical limits, like the distinction between running a program and 
writing it.