Re: ruby IDE's

Tom Cloyd wrote:

>>   
> James, I'm a big fan of yours, but I'm also keenly aware of poorly 
> constructed arguments (e.g., ad hominem it bastard brothers). I think I 
> have to agree with Marc here. I think he was making a legitimate 
> proposition - in form if not in substance. He may be right, but I cannot 
> confirm it. And I don't see any hint of ad hominem here. We DO see 
> things through the lense of our experience. We have little choice.

I read too quickly and missed that the OP expressed inexperience.  So I 
was wrong in assessing the intent of the response, and wrong in my 
reply.   Mea culpa.

However,  absent that bit of info,  it is generally insulting to suggest 
to someone that their particular opinion is due to a lack a experience 
(as opposed to criticism the opinion directly).  The "you would think 
different if you weren't so inexperienced" line is a common way to knock 
down a person rather than the opinion expressed.  If nothing else, it's 
cheap and dismissive.

Oddly enough, though, I usually see this particular argument going the 
other way; people asserting that IDE's are a beginner's crutch, and that 
with enough experience people will eventually come around to the One 
True Way of Coding.

I don't find *that* any more persuasive, and generally don't see a 
connection between experience and IDE preference.  It just happens to be 
the case with me that more experience has lead me further away from 
IDE's, but I know smart, skilled people who are just the opposite.

> 
> I will say, however, that after working with a number of IDE's, and 
> rather enjoying them for their "gee whiz" appeal - all those tools, and 
> such - retreating from the disaster that Aptana was for a while to mere 
> jEdit and the CLI was a breath of fresh air for me. I felt, and still 
> feel, MUCH more directly engaged, and I've gotten a ton of work done 
> with these tools.


That sounds like my experience as well, preferring multiple consoles, 
screen, gvim, tabs, etc. to some monolithic IDE.  But certain projects 
and languages beg for an IDE (many large Java projects would have been 
hell without NetBeans or Eclipse).

> 
> I strongly believe in keeping things as simple as possible. And I should 
> also mention that while I've designed and run a number of websites, I do 
> not use Rails and am not likely to. I can see how with Rails something 
> like Aptana or Netbeans might be peachy. Netbeans might be terrific also 
> if one was using jruby, which certainly does have some nice 
> features...but not for me.

NetBeans has some sweet refactoring tools, and can't be beat for the GUI 
editor, but when I use it I use it in conjunction with gvim so as to not 
slow down my basic editing.


> 
> Gotta fit the tools to the guy, and his needs, I suspect.
> 

No doubt.



-- 
James Britt

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