From: Devin Mullins <twifkak@...>
Date: 2005-11-08T12:35:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Investigating Ruby - key limitations ?

Curt Sampson wrote:

> Actually, I'd find some better interactive support for exploring methods
> and properties available on objects to be a big boon in the ruby world.
> All the time I find myself getting back an object from a method and
> thinking, "what the heck is it, and what can I do with it?"

(Exuberant)? ctags might help with that. It's a fairly general 'search 
for the file/line that defined this method'-type thing. That's all I 
know about it.

Personally, I need basically three things in an IDE:
1. Indentation management. Auto-indents when you hit enter, and allows 
you to indent/unindent blocks of text.
2. Syntax highlighting.
3. "Folder drawer." TextMate does this perfectly for me -- no bells, no 
whistles, just an interactive view of my directory tree. This is 
especially important for Rails, where you start off with a pretty fancy 
tree from Day 0.

I'm pretty sure it's possible to get all that in vi (or, at least, vim), 
but I'm way too lazy to set it up. :)

Devin