On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 5:07 PM, Tom Cloyd<tomcloyd / comcast.net> wrote:

> Well, the question of editors is entirely different from that of IDEs. One
> can employ a good editor (I use jEdit, and it's excellent -also platform
> independent) without all the front end nonsense of an IDE. Admittedly,
> however, for some people an IDE may seem a good idea. But what does it
> really do for you?

I use editor + console. I don't launch irb sessions inside IDEs, nor
do I launch servers or execute rake tasks.

But RubyMine for example gives you an editor which is just richer. It
tells you that your code is well/bad formed on the fly, it allows you
to do some refactors robustly, it understands Rails refactors, like
the implications in the file system of refactoring a controller.
Code-completion and jumping to definitions works very decently, open
type, etc. The list of features like this is long. Of course you have
all the goodies in other editors, moving around.

So it is not a matter of IDE versus TM, say, you can use RubyMine just
because of the editor and project management, and still have your
consoles around.

Oh BTW RubyMine is by far my preferred IDE for Ruby/Rails development.