From: Curt Hibbs <curt@...>
Date: 2001-12-09T11:54:04+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:27990] Re: Ruby IDE?? What about using Eclipse??

> I waffle back and forth between eclipse and intellij
> for my java development.  intellij's editor is the
> best java editor i have ever used.  But being a VAJ
> fan, I must have decent class browsers.  It would be
> great to have that kind of support for ruby.
>
> I am having a hard time envisioning the
> module/class/method browsers for ruby.  Does anyone
> have idea what these should/could look like?  I've
> always been a fan of the smalltalk browsers, but I
> think class definitions being scattered across
> multiple files brings up interesting challenges.
> Maybe somthing totally file based would be the way to
> start out.  What do people really want in this
> department?

I also was a diehard VAJ user (that's VisualAge for Java) because of its
class browser. The class browser is what I meant when I said "logical
navigation" earlier (as opposed to physical navigation which is files). I
would even when I was on projects where they were using different tools, I
would import into VAJ for the browser. I stopped doing that When borland
came out with JBuilder 4 (They are up to JBuilder 5 now) which has class
browsing every bit a good as VAJ, but still works with ordinary files.

You combine good class browsing (like VAJ or JBuilder) with top-notch
code-assist facilities (like Intellij IDEA), apply that to Ruby, and I think
that would result in a excellent, high-productivity tool.

Curt