RoR IDE - which one do you use?

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hello all,

I am a .net/c# developer using Visual Studio, and I wonder which ID is widely being used for RoR development.

I downloaded and installed the following three products, but I have not started comparing each other.

NetBeans w/ RoR RadRails (Aptana) Komodo Free Editor

For mid-size enterprise application development, which IDE do you think is the most appropriate from your real experience?

Thank you for your advice!!!!

2

this has been a topic of constant discussion. if you do a search on railsforum.com you will find all of the past discussions.

I have been playing around with Ruby on Rails for about a year, and just started to really get serious about making a switch from .net/c#. i have tried just about every discussed editor/IDE mentioned, and it really comes down to what features you are looking for, and what works for you. a majority of the RoR community uses TextMate, which requires you to either have a Mac, or purchase one. i spend most of my time using windows, so textmate is not so much an option (i do have one at home though). Given a choice i would use textmate, but work is getting in the way. So, for work my choice would be NetBeans. it has way more features than i need or use, and uses more memory than a text editor, but i don’t care for the others. I have been trying Ruby in Steel, which has some promise, but i need a bit more time. plus it’s got a rather large price tag. feel free to ask any questions you may have. i really enjoy the RoR community, and i think you will too.

Jason

3

Thank you Jason for your advice!

I started enjoying this RoR community site :wink:

Jae

Jason White wrote:

4

Hi,

According to Agile Web Dev with Rails v3, you shouldn’t use an IDE at all. Why do you even ask? :slight_smile:

Contrastly, I’ve been a NetBeans user for a time so I downloaded the Ruby package, and I still use it. I recently switched to 6.5 beta because of Rails 2.1.1 support and a smaller footprint.

I don’t have to type in SVN commands any more - not even ‘Add’.

CmdJohnson

5

Jae Lee wrote:

Hello all,

I am a .net/c# developer using Visual Studio,

You should try our IDE, Ruby In Steel. It is a Visual Studio product. It has all the things you are used to: drill-down debugging, drag+drop watch variables, visual designer for Rails etc. We do a free 60 day trial so you have plenty of time to try it :wink:

best wishes Huw Collingbourne

SapphireSteel Software Ruby and Rails In Visual Studio http://www.sapphiresteel.com

6

Huw,

I couldn't agree more. Ruby in Steel integrates nicely to your existing Visual Studio environment. So if you are comfortable with VS, you at Ruby in Steel and you have a great way to write RoR apps.

Otherwise, NetBeans is my second choice if I want to use an IDE. If no IDE the E-TextEditor on Windows or TextMate on the Mac.

-Rob Bazinet

7

If you’re looking for Textmate on windows, take a look at E-texteditor (http://www.e-texteditor.com/) It’s an editor written for Windows that has nearly all the functionality of Textmate, and supports all plugins and extensions written for Textmate as well, so you can benefit from the Textmate community too. I’m using this for all my Ruby development, including rails. If you install Cygwin (http://cygwin.com/) with it, you also have a lot more power working from your console.

8

I have been using TextMate, as the Rails website says that it is the editor of their choice.

Its pretty nice and has support for many languages. Its got good shortcut/bundles and make the coding process pretty fast. Its cheap too!

9

An I the only one who uses Aptana? It has a lot of features and helped me a lot while I was learning because you don't have to worry about firing up the server and remembering all generators and rake methods. It's Java, wich (to me at least) means it consumes a lot of resources and sometimes it's not as responsive as it should be, but I've kind of got used to it and still expect it to improve.

It runs on both Linux and Windows (not sure about Mac).

10

I like UltraEdit Studio....it has RoR syntax checking (although I do not use it often), supports sftp and is relatively cheap in price. I use that and ultracompare pro and for the price you reall cannot compare it to anything else. I would have used a free product but could not find a good windows app that did sftp and was free.

The app itself is fast and very lightweight which makes it great for development and the macro features are amazing too.

11

I use TextMate when on Mac. Otherwise http://www.geany.org/ .

12

If you are looking for a good editor the name is "Emacs". It has mode RoR too for do more easy the develpment with RoR.

Good luck

13

Jae Lee wrote:


Hello all,
I am a .net/c# developer using Visual Studio, and I wonder which ID is
widely being used for RoR development.
I downloaded and installed the following three products, but I have not
started comparing each other.
NetBeans w/ RoR
RadRails (Aptana)
Komodo Free Editor
For mid-size enterprise application development, which IDE do you think
is the most appropriate from your real experience?
Thank you for your advice!!!!

vim (emacs occasionally)

14

I use TextMate on my Mac. Very hard to beat it.

15

I use Netbeans, even though java is pretty slow and not as responsive as I wished, it has every feature I can imagine and some that I couldn't.

16

It is a pity fonts are not nicely rendered on Macs.

17

I use Vim under Windows

18

I seriously envy you and all the Mac RoR devs out there.

19

My Mac is a good ole' iBook from 2004, and it completely blasts off my Core2Duo windows box when running ruby code.

You can find them for cheap. I only use my iBook for development, as it is so slow I can't waste my time on youtube, so I am even more productive :stuck_out_tongue:

20

I use NetBeans for Rails, and I like it. The generator plugins aren't perfect (i.e. no clue to syntax, they are just wrappers around the scripts), but you don't have to use them.

Aptana RadRails tries to take over your Eclipse environment, and tries to do things like installing its own update manager. I can't say for sure how it is as an editor because I've never been able to get it set up properly, and I've never gotten it to remove itself when I give up, either. I work primarily in Java, and use Eclipse for that, but I keep NetBeans installed for Rails work.

I haven't tried Komodo.

I'd say using a bare text editor is probably better for learning Rails, as it lets you see where the magic comes from.