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I am a person who is completely new to the Ruby on Rails coding language.

A friend and I were going to get our feet wet, but instead now want to jump right in.

What would be the best development environment for Ruby on Rails? I am on a Windows machine and my friend is on a Mac.

I have the Eclipse development environment for Java for which I am also learning. Is there a similar program like that for Ruby on Rails?

Any feedback at all would be great.

Thanks in advance.

AdamY
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    See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/91445/best-ide-for-ruby-on-rails and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16991/what-ruby-ide-do-you-prefer and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16064/what-ide-to-use-for-developing-in-ruby-on-rails-on-windows and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/744935/whats-a-good-ruby-development-environment-for-the-mac and possibly http://stackoverflow.com/questions/804817/ruby-development-environment – Shog9 Oct 12 '10 at 04:45

6 Answers6

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Text editors over IDEs, such as Vim (with plugins), Textmate, etc.

Since Ruby is dynamically typed, IDE is not helpful to it like that Eclipse to Java programming language. And all files and directories are well structured, so navigating to different files is quite easy. The development web server is very simple to use: no compilation, no deployment, no restart, just refresh your browsers.

In such a situation, pros of IDE are not noticeable, but cons does - slow and clumsy.

Xenofex
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I don't think you need an IDE for RoR, but if you really need one, with with IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse. But I find eclipse buggy for rails.

What IDE to use for developing in Ruby on Rails on windows?

Community
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zengr
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  • Thanks for your input and the link. I'll try out a bunch of IDE and choose which one works best for me. – AdamY Oct 12 '10 at 05:29
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I really like how Ruby lets you use the REPL approach. My favorite IDE for Ruby isn't an IDE as such. I use a text editor and the IRB or Rails Console. Playing in the Rails Console is fun and while having fun you get very productive.

Jonas Elfström
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There's also Emacs, Vim, E, and others out there. They all have plenty of rails developers using them, which means plenty of add-ons and extensions. I realize that these aren't IDEs precisely, but with plugins and whatnot they get very close. In any case, RoR uses too much metaprogramming for IDEs to work in anything more than the most basic sense in my experience, so I personally feel that in that regard text editors ought to be considered on pretty much the same playing field anyways.

iand675
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If you would prefer to use an IDE, Netbeans is a pretty good free product that runs on both Windows and Mac OS X. The Ruby edition of Netbeans will install everything that you need to get started with Rails apart from a database.

I agree with the other comments, though - the best environment for Ruby on Rails is a good text editor with Ruby and Rails support, and the command-line. Quite a few people put Linux in a virtual machine on their Windows desktop, and do their Rails development in the Linux system.

Stuart Ellis
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Personally, I use Aptana Studio, even if it's now somewhat antiquated/out-of-date and pretty much unsupported (officially) at this point. It was incredibly helpful when I first began learning RoR, since its debugger helps to reveal many variables a beginner might need to use but which they would not otherwise see or even be aware of.

It has brought benefit to me every step of the way over the past 10 years, due to its rich ruby debugger and other somewhat standard "IDE" abilities (code assist, todo task manager, excellent and easy to use search (both in-document and at the project level), and inboard server...there are other tools, but these are the ones that are productivity tools for me). I can't emphasize enough that the debugger alone is a good reason to use it. Many elements of ROR are normally obscured to the higher level environment of a simple text editor and a simple line-level server development environment, and the Apatana Studio debugger reveals pretty much everything in an easy to see manner.

If you're just writing simple ruby code snippets to get through first year CS course work, maybe I'd agree with those who say an IDE is unimportant, but for me, supporting a company where I'm the sole code "team" member. I couldn't cope without it.

andrew
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