From: Rich Kilmer <rich@...>
Date: 2002-11-06T05:45:31+09:00
Subject: IDEs (was RE: Ruby Weekly News)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Weirich [mailto:jim@mail.one.net] On Behalf Of Jim Weirich
> Sent: Friday, October 25, 2002 6:59 AM
> To: ruby-talk ML
> Subject: Re: Ruby Weekly News
> 
> 
> On Thu, 2002-10-24 at 10:50, Daniel Berger wrote:
> 
> > Oh, I think FreeRIDE will eventually be awesome.  But as the saying 
> > goes, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. :)
> 
> I'm sure FreeRIDE will be cool, and I'm looking forward to 
> Rich's presentation at RubyConf.  But I think one draw of the 
> Eclipse Ruby plugin will be software houses that are already 
> using Eclipse for Java developement.  You can say "Look, it 
> already works with the tools we are using." 
> 
> Its not a matter of either/or, but both/and.  They will 
> target different audiences.

I agree.  I think that if you are a user of Eclipse and would like to
hack the occasional Ruby script, having a syntax-aware editing
component/debugging system would be very nice.  That and getting all the
Eclipse CVS/File mgt (which FreeRIDE will also have).  We are going for
the IDE written in Ruby to allow extension by the broadest (Ruby-wise)
audience. 

As I said in the presentation at RubyConf, I cannot (in good conscience)
tell a Ruby-newbie that they have to download an 18MB (54MBw/SDK) Java
development environment (and then Java) to write significant Ruby
applications where the whole FreeRIDE distro (w/Ruby) will likely be <
6MB (including FxRuby).

That said, FreeRIDE will have significant capabilities specific to Ruby
that Eclipse will not be able to touch ;-)

-Rich

> 
> -- 
> -- Jim Weirich     jweirich@one.net    http://w3.one.net/~jweirich
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, 
> not tried it." -- Donald Knuth (in a memo to Peter van Emde Boas)
> 
> 
>