[ruby-talk:4950] Re: Some q's to Ruby professionals

Hi,

Dave Thomas wrote:
>
> "Franz GEIGER" <[e-mail]> writes:
>
> > Interesting. Ruby needs that - every language needs a good IDE
(especially
> > upcoming ones), because that makes a great part of productivity.
Especially
> > a newbie consideres it this way:
> > Python (or Perl resp.) + IDE > Ruby;
> > Python (or Perl resp.) + IDE <= Ruby + IDE;
>
> Except I've never met anyone who actually used an IDE to write Perl. I
> know they exist, but I suspect they're in a vast minority.

That's almost certainly true, but that might change over the next few
years, and there are other factors to keep in mind.

The existence of an IDE is a factor that many (although hopefully not
most) people (wisely or not) consider as a factor for deciding whether or
not to use (or to permit the use of) a new language. (Perl was already
widely used before IDEs came into vogue, so it could be considered to have
been effectively grandfathered in this respect.)

Perl is widely (and maybe primarily) known/regarded/used as a so-called
*scripting* language, so I wouldn't consider its present IDE status to be
particularly relevant one way or the other to Python or Ruby.

Most people didn't use Java IDEs a few years ago because of cost (i.e. not
free) and because of their initially limited utility, yet many (if not a
majority of) people nowadays probably start out (initially) learning/using
Java with an IDE.

Many people (and I don't know if this is a big or small fraction),
including Python's designer, seem to regard Python's IDE as a significant
plus.

Activestate probably wouldn't bother with a Perl and Python IDE unless
they expected it would significantly help attract more people to Perl and
Python (and thus some fraction thereof to their other, non-free products).
We'll have to wait and see.

Finally, it might turn out that Ruby's great features could make possible
a Ruby-extensible IDE that was substantually superior to IDEs for other
languages. (It might even incoroprate an RAA module browser, Dave's
dynamic module fetcher/installer, and so on.)

--
Conrad Schneiker
(This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)