From: BearItAll <bearitall@...>
Date: 2005-09-08T01:11:28+09:00
Subject: Re: Need help finding decent IDE/development environment for Windows

On Wed, 07 Sep 2005 07:17:24 -0700, Paul Dix wrote:

> I've just started playing around with ruby on rails and by association,
> ruby itself.  One of the things I've been trying to get set to my
> liking is a decent development environment.  I'm working in Windows and
> I'm just not sure what set of tools will work decently (alternatively,
> I'd develop in Linux if the tools are better there).  Some of the
> things I'm looking for:
>   - good syntax highlighting
>   - code completion
>   - auto indentation
>   - debugging
>   - tabbed view of open files
>   - project view or a folder view of files
>   - works for .rb and .rhtml files
>   - support for rails
> I've spent a little time looking at the following options:
>   - EditPlus
>   - UltraEdit
>   - gvim
>   - SciTE
>   - jEdit
>   - ArachnoRuby
> None of these seem to quite meet all those needs.  Four main things I
> can't seem to find together are:
>   - debugging
>   - support for rails
>   - code completion
>   - support for rhtml files
> I read through and gave a brief try to debugging with breakpoint as
> outlined here:
> http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/show/HowtoDebugWithBreakpoint
> I'm obviously too much of a ruby n00b at this point to make good use of
> this.
> I noticed some of these support basic code completion with the core
> ruby language, but that's it.
> I see that everone working on Mac loves TextMate but for me that just
> isn't an option.
> Does anyone have suggestions on what I should be looking at?  Can you
> give me very specific information about setup and tools?  Any help
> would be greatly appreciated.

I'm entirely a UNIX/Linux man so I may be a touch biased. But I have done
a lot of development work on MS Windows too.

IDE's generally are great if you are new to a language, and even if you
are not new pop ups giving you the params of  the standard functions as
you type can be handy. But eventually all of that stuff simply will get in
your way.

I develop much faster using vi(m) (but substitute your own plain text
editor), a console for nipping about the project directory structure and a
browse window open if thats the sort of interface your using.

Then you write a function, save :w, test in the console or browser you
have open. Or if its a function/class you can test stand alone, then send
it directly to ruby/php or what ever. ':w !ruby' you can't get much more
immediate feedback than that. No opening and closing Windows or dialogues.