From: Lyle Johnson <lyle@...>
Date: 2003-09-17T23:34:47+09:00
Subject: Re: newbie question from a smalltalker

Adriano Volpones wrote:

> I am a seasoned Smalltalk developer and I'm playing with Ruby which I found
> the best script language in the spirit of Smalltalk.
> 
> What I cannot find in it is the entire world of programming and refactoring
> tools that are for long time available in every Smalltalk environment.
> 
> For example the simple list of "implementors" and "senders" of a method is
> invaluable when the project begins to grow up to hundreds of classes.
> 
> The value of a language is in it's "elegance" but in a day-by-day work the
> tools for the programmers are of the same or greater interest.
> 
> Am I wrong in something about the use of Ruby?

I will be interested to see some of the other replies to your questions, 
but I think the answer is that there aren't any tools (for Ruby) quite 
like what you're describing.

Refactoring tools, as well as tools to extract lists of method 
implementors/senders, must rely on some kind of "database" of all of the 
known classes. From what little I know about Smalltalk, this is a 
central concept in the Smalltalk development environment. There is no 
such concept in Ruby (or any other programming language that I've worked 
with).

The closest thing we have for this in Ruby is the FreeRIDE project, 
which is building an IDE for Ruby development. One of the long-term 
goals is to be able to provide support for tools like refactoring. But I 
think that's probably still a ways off.