From: Just Another Victim of the Ambient Morality <ihatespam@...>
Date: 2006-07-11T18:55:12+09:00
Subject: Some questions about serious Ruby development...

    I like Ruby.  I like it more than Python.  It's my PERL replacement.  I 
used to use PERL for automated file management but I have switched to Ruby 
because it is awesome and PERL blows.  To be fair, I thought PERL was 
awesome at the time but it's old news, now...

    So, here I come, Ruby!

    I'm starting to think that I can use Ruby for some serious software 
development.  I think a hardcore application can be written in a careful 
combination of Ruby and C++ (and some other stuff, too!).  So, I did a bit 
of looking around which has only caused me to develop some questions...

    Can anyone recommend a good IDE?  Ah, the tired IDE question...  I did a 
search on groups.google on this subject and, yes, it is a common question. 
However, every instance of it seems to have the same theme.  Vi(m) is the 
greatest text editor out there (I found Emacs too hard to learn).  Syntax 
highlighting is highly overrated and auto-completion is useless.  What I 
need from an IDE is a debugger!  Even if it were as simple as the ability to 
place breakpoints, step into and over lines of code, display evaluation 
results (like what IRB does), and list variables in scope.  It would also be 
nice if it would let me evaluate methods of variables in scope, so I can try 
to get the state of various objects.  Seriously, I'm tired of printf 
debugging (not that anyone uses printf in Ruby)...

    Can anyone recommend a good... I don't know the proper term for this 
but... a GUI toolkit?  A widget toolkit?  Something that allows me to create 
and manage windows and widgets to put in those windows.  I'll need the 
ability to create new (custom) widgets and it would be nice if it were cross 
platform...

    Well, those are my questions, for now.  I'll certainly be back if I have 
any more and I will, of course, continue to lurk here as well as answer the 
few questions I think I can answer competently!  I'm really excited about 
doing some serious Ruby development and I look forward to whatever 
suggestions I get!
    Thank you for your help...