From: Kevin Kleinfelter <ruby-talk@...>
Date: 2005-01-03T03:57:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Best ways to accelerate Ruby's popularity

I assert that the programming environment may be more important in attracting new users than features of the language.  I suspect
that few BASIC enthusiasts would fans of the language if their access were via Emacs and a VB shell. 

I used to teach at a vocational/technical college. With Visual Basic or with BASIC on the old Apple 2, or even on the UCSD P-system,
I could turn the kids loose after an hour's lecture. FreeRIDE and RDT are good starts, but they have a long way to go before they
are bullet-proof and accessible to entry-level programmers.  

Even to an old fart like me (I've been programming since 1976), the bother (for lack of a better term) of the tools available for
developing with Ruby may push me out of Ruby.  I don't so much need an IDE per se, but I do need a bullet-proof debugger. I would
dearly like to see an environment that would let me add/change/delete lines of code in the middle of execution, without having to
terminate and restart the application I'm testing.

Maybe ActiveState could be induced to publish an interface to which the Ruby community could develop?  I'm thinking that if
ActiveState won't provide Ruby support in Komodo, the Ruby community could provide support for Komodo. As the proverb goes, "If
Mohammend won't go to the mountain, bring the mountain to Mohammed."


Kevin Kleinfelter