From: Neville Franks Date: 2007-02-28T05:39:28+09:00 Subject: Re: Rant abouts IDE's This discussion is plain crazy. Yes it is crucial that students learn all of the low level underlying concepts in their chosen endevour, but don't force inadequate tools on people who write for a living and need to be as productive as possible. When I started programming 20+ years ago I did everything in Assembler, learnt how to squeeze the last byte out of what I wrote, learnt how to use a debugger in depth and learnt how to profile my code to find the hotspots. All of these have stayed with me and held me in good stead over the years. If you are writing in a compiled language and don't know how to read assembler or use a debugger (which many students don't), then you've got a big problem. Syntax highlighting is a huge boost to productivity as it can instantly make problems visible while you are writing, instead of waisting time with edit-compile-edit cycles. Can you spot the difference between: id = "%x" % (ab * 2) and id = "%x" %(ab * 2) or will you have to wait for Ruby to tell you? Do you want to keep pressing space/tab/backspace to get your code indented nicely or do you want to get on with real task of writing code and let the editor automatically indent your code for you. And the person who said they need to know every file and whats in it, is nuts IMO. I want to edit method abc or class xyw - I don't care what file these are in, or what drive or directory that file is in, or be concerned if another developer has moved them to a different file. I just want to get on and work with the code, and let the editor keep track of where every method, class etc is located. If you've ever worked on a complex set of code with hundreds or worse, thousands of files, then having the code navigation capabilities I'm referring to are essential. I write software for a living and like any wise tradespersons, I use the best tools that enable me to be the most productive, so that I can have some chance at delivering products to my customers in a timely fashion. As for Komodo I humbly suggest you look at our IDE, ED4W. See: http://blog.surfulater.com/2007/02/21/write-ruby-code-faster-with-ed-for-windows/ Neville Franks, author of ED for Windows and Surfulater. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.