On 2/23/07, Servando Garcia <garcia.servando / gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I apologize in advance if I offend anyone on this list. My post below is
> more a rant than a question.
>
> Yes I agree that Komodo is a very nice IDE. When I am teaching programming
> one, I find that many of my students get so involved with using the lasted
> IDE ; that they lose sight of the project they should be working on. I
> suggest to my students to use either Vi or emacs to get the job done.
>
> Beginning programmers should concentrate solely on the basics of
> programming.

I read an interesting blog post about this recently. Damn. I would have linked
it if I could.

Its different when you are learning at the same time as having to get a job
done. You have to compromise between tool-assisted results and getting
enough foundation skills to grok what you have actually completed.

But I recommend and even actively steer people away from IDEs. You need
to know where files go etc. and why thats important. Programming editors
are what you want at the start - syntax colouring, run code from editor, and
see results in editor is what you want. Debugger would be nice in some platforms
where that is essential.

To all the people who learn Ruby in my sphere of influence - I say use SCiTe
(on windows), IRB or Notepad++ (windows).

I am also a command-line type of guy when I am learning rails. I use RoRed
to organise the files a bit (there are a lot - too much for a
programming editor)
but thats it. When I learn it, yeah I will use a big IDE that suits.