Hello Jeff,

JR> One major problem with just about every IDE that causes resistance is
JR> that the editor component sucks in comparison to vim or emacs

Well this is your opinion.

JR> main reasons ruby is such a joy to use.  Smalltalk gets around the issue
JR> by being inside a live environment, and having a unique sort of program

Have you ever used SmallTalk ?
It does not get around this.

JR> life cycle.  (You don't really generate methods at run-time, because it
JR> is always run-time...)  The tool can inspect live memory to make sure
JR> that it refactors correctly.  Also, in a Smalltalk environment every
JR> class is defined in the browser, which gives you a much cleaner
JR> perspective to work from.

The most important is that Smalltalk names are not as short as the
ruby ones and so you have less conflicts. Remember that Smalltalk methods
names include parts of the parameter signature. And Smalltalk is far from
being so overloaded.

Also while possible the coding style of Smalltalk is much cleaner then
the ruby one where people like to use the run-time features much more.
This has indeed to do with the fact that Ruby does not live in an
image.

JR> be useful.  Seems to me like any self respecting ruby-ide is going to
JR> have to be written in ruby.  (At least most of it.)

Well the two projects FreeRide and Mondrian shows that you are wrong
here.


-- 
 Best regards,                        emailto: scholz at scriptolutions dot com
 Lothar Scholz                        http://www.ruby-ide.com
 CTO Scriptolutions                   Ruby, PHP, Python IDE 's