Ruby Tool Survey

R

Rick DeNatale

I'm running a survey to find out what tools Ruby and Rails people
use. Explanation and (soon) results at http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/
When/200x/2007/11/20/Ruby-IDE-Survey - the survey itself is at

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=GFR_2fGqqmOaL1zWDiuGhL0w_3d_3d

I'm not really well Rails-connected. Could I ask someone, as a
favor, to relay the pointers over to Rails mailing-list land?

Thanks in advance, Tim

Well I took the survey but found it unsatisfying.

1) I'm a rails person who also does significant non-rails ruby
programming, but that wasn't an option.

2) Not a very wide tool selection, only editiors and an ide or two.
What about other tools, like rdebug, rspec, test/unit, .......

The overall ruby tools picture is broader than this. It's reminiscent
of a video recently published by one of the Smalltalk vendors which
compared the Smalltalk IDE to plain vanilla Rails development
following an introductory tutorial. While I'm sympathetic to the
Smalltalk POV, ruby/rails toolage HAS progressed past the early 80s.
 
D

Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney

Well I took the survey but found it unsatisfying.
Agreed. I'd be curious to see a much more comprehensive survey.
Testing behavior, operating systems, alternate interpreters (jruby),
GUIs, web servers. Sure, you can get a pretty good sense from the
mailing list, but you gotta love statistics.

Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney
 
B

Brian Adkins

I'm running a survey to find out what tools Ruby and Rails people
use. Explanation and (soon) results athttp://www.tbray.org/ongoing/
When/200x/2007/11/20/Ruby-IDE-Survey - the survey itself is at

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=GFR_2fGqqmOaL1zWDiuGhL0w_3d_3d

I'm not really well Rails-connected. Could I ask someone, as a
favor, to relay the pointers over to Rails mailing-list land?

Thanks in advance, Tim

I agree that the survey was limited, but why would one need anything
besides vim for Ruby development? ;)

Let us know here when the results are up.
 
A

ara.t.howard

I'm running a survey to find out what tools Ruby and Rails people
use. Explanation and (soon) results at http://www.tbray.org/
ongoing/When/200x/2007/11/20/Ruby-IDE-Survey - the survey itself is at

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=GFR_2fGqqmOaL1zWDiuGhL0w_3d_3d

I'm not really well Rails-connected. Could I ask someone, as a
favor, to relay the pointers over to Rails mailing-list land?

Thanks in advance, Tim

i get this posting comments:

Insertion Failure

Error: Subsystem schema-validation initializer not started; exiting.

my comment:

"It is annoying to have to pick: I do a ton of both rails and non-
rails work. I also do a ton of non-ruby work. I also work on vax,
solaris, linux, osx and windows. That's why vim is the only choice -
only it handles all this with aplomb whether locally or via a slow
ssh connection. Vim + screen is the universal ide."


regards.

a @ http://codeforpeople.com/
 
A

ara.t.howard

I agree that the survey was limited, but why would one need anything
besides vim for Ruby development? ;)

i also *need* screen. because i worked remotely on at least a dozen
machines over the course of a given week i find it critical to be to
detach a vim session and pick up where i left off and also to
multiplex terminals, otherwise i'd have 30 or more open. screen +
vim is the ultimate ide, it even works with c and fortran. gasp!

a @ http://codeforpeople.com/
 
A

Austin Ziegler

Well I took the survey but found it unsatisfying.

1) I'm a rails person who also does significant non-rails ruby
programming, but that wasn't an option.
;)

2) Not a very wide tool selection, only editiors and an ide or two.
What about other tools, like rdebug, rspec, test/unit, .......

Tim's blog provides a bit more context:

At Sun, I'm in the Developer Tools group. Someone asked "Which tools
does the Ruby gang use, anyhow?" I said "Hmm, TextMate, Emacs, Vi,
recently some Eclipse and NetBeans." They said "How do you know?" I
said "Uh." They said "Why don't you ask?" So I am. Drop by the Ruby
Tool Survey and let's find out. There are only two questions; if it takes
you more than fifteen seconds there's something wrong. I promise to
publish all the results in full right here in this entry once I have them
at the end of the month.

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2007/11/20/Ruby-IDE-Survey

It's imperfect and limited, but it's not supposed to be a State of the
Developer, but a temperature gauge and that's it.

-austin
 
B

Brian Adkins

i also *need* screen. because i worked remotely on at least a dozen
machines over the course of a given week i find it critical to be to
detach a vim session and pick up where i left off and also to
multiplex terminals, otherwise i'd have 30 or more open. screen +
vim is the ultimate ide, it even works with c and fortran. gasp!

Nice tip on screen. My need is not as great, but there have been times
when it would've been useful, so I just read up on it.
 
P

Peter Vanderhaden

Brian,
I could use "screen". Can you tell me where you "read up on it"? I've
looked on the web, but didn't find anything relevant. I'd like to know
how to use it so I can leave work and pick up a session at home.
Thanks,
PV
 
B

Brian Adkins

Brian,
I could use "screen". Can you tell me where you "read up on it"? I've
looked on the web, but didn't find anything relevant. I'd like to know
how to use it so I can leave work and pick up a session at home.
Thanks,
PV

man screen

and/or

Google (screen)
 
C

Charles Oliver Nutter

Brian said:
man screen

and/or

Google (screen)

The main tip I read was to use <ctrl>-a d to "detach" from the screen
session. Then invoke "screen -x" to re-attach.

It always amazes me every time someone doesn't know about screen. Back
in the day it was absolutely indispensable. Now that I have a terminal
window with tabs it's not as big a deal, but I still use it on remote
servers.

- Charlie
 
A

ara.t.howard

man screen

and/or

Google (screen)

The main tip I read was to use <ctrl>-a d to "detach" from the screen
session. Then invoke "screen -x" to re-attach.

these are the aliases i use most often from the command line

cfp:~ > grep screen .bash_profile
alias sl='screen -list '
alias sdr='screen -d -r '
alias s='screen -D -R '

these allow me to start a named screen with, for example

cfp:~ > s attributes

and then to list them, viewing the names with

cfp:~ > sl
There are screens on:
2364.attributes-5.0.0 (Attached)
2611.systemu-1.2.0 (Attached)
4131.orderedhash-0.0.3 (Attached)
554.bj-0.0.1 (Attached)
747.main-2.6.0 (Attached)


and to re-attach to a named screen with

cfp:~ > sdr attributes

which dumps me exactly where i was several days ago working on the
project


on my mac it use iterm and keep one tab per project, with each tab
containing a screen that itself contains all the goings on for that
project, for example and edit window, one running ./script/console,
one tailing a log file, etc. with this approach it's quite easy to
have 10 or 20 projects, some rails, some ruby, some c, some perl, all
open in the same 'ide' with the same interface.

maybe i'll put together a screencast (no pun intended) at some point
to give a visual of what this is like to work in.

cheers.

a @ http://codeforpeople.com/
 
G

Giles Bowkett

maybe i'll put together a screencast (no pun intended) at some point

just to expand on my own plus 1, I've been obsessing over tools
recently - fixing up my IRB enhancements, learning emacs, going back
to the TextMate book for all the stuff I missed, upgrading from grep
to ack, getting roasted alive for daring to criticize debuggers, etc.,
etc.

(one surprising thing: reading the emacs Lisp for the Ruby syntax
coloring support. I was much less enthused than I had expected to be -
hundreds of lines of code, none of the OO structure I'm used to - I've
seen Perl that was easier to read, at least in the "table of
contents"/"which sections do what" sense.)

anyway, I was always a vi guy, but then I switched to TextMate, but
then I got tired of it and started looking into emacs, and for sheer
power it looks like the king. so a screencast on features of vi I
didn't know about is definitely very useful to me.

--
Giles Bowkett

Podcast: http://hollywoodgrit.blogspot.com
Blog: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com
Portfolio: http://www.gilesgoatboy.org
Tumblelog: http://giles.tumblr.com
 
M

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

Giles said:
(one surprising thing: reading the emacs Lisp for the Ruby syntax
coloring support. I was much less enthused than I had expected to be -
hundreds of lines of code, none of the OO structure I'm used to - I've
seen Perl that was easier to read, at least in the "table of
contents"/"which sections do what" sense.)

Emacs and Lisp are so tightly interbred from many decades of co-use that

a. Unless you know Lisp fairly well, it's tough to hack on emacs, and
b. It's tough to find a better editor for Lisp.

Hard-core Lisp programmers probably are incapable of using an IDE other
than emacs anyway. :) I never learned emacs -- I was told that it was a
memory hog, and since I wasn't getting paid to develop Lisp, I used the
editor I was given rather than force the issue.
anyway, I was always a vi guy, but then I switched to TextMate, but
then I got tired of it and started looking into emacs, and for sheer
power it looks like the king. so a screencast on features of vi I
didn't know about is definitely very useful to me.

Well ... there's "vi" and then there's Vim 7.x. :) The original vi is a
nice, compact, regular-expression-based visual editor that will function
well on a dumb terminal. Vim 7.x, on the other hand, has a lot of new
features, including GVim, a semi-happy marriage of vim and a
Notepad-like GUI editor. Vim 7.x is probably close to the feature count
of emacs by now, while the original vi was something you could learn
just about all of in an afternoon.

To throw another monkey wrench into the discussion, I rather like SciTe.
The underlying "scintilla" widgets integrate well with scripting
languages like Ruby and Python, and it's cross-platform.
 
C

Cameron McBride

http://drawohara.tumblr.com/post/20284516

the quality sux but the conversion to flv was blowing up on my box -
i'll try again tomorrow. until the low-quality version and link to
full res is here.

just a quick overview - but maybe it gives the flavour.

very cool.

My favorite part is the first 5 seconds. Bottom right shows ara's
face. Opening dialog: "alright .. ::takes swig of beer bottle:: .."
[1]

Your workflow is indeed very close to mine! ;)

btw, screen and vim are also very critical tools for me. I've
currently cycled out of iterm, though.

Cameron

[1] to be fair, I can not see a label -- so it could just be root beer
or the like.
 
A

ara.t.howard

very cool.

My favorite part is the first 5 seconds. Bottom right shows ara's
face. Opening dialog: "alright .. ::takes swig of beer bottle:: .."
[1]

Your workflow is indeed very close to mine! ;)

btw, screen and vim are also very critical tools for me. I've
currently cycled out of iterm, though.

Cameron

[1] to be fair, I can not see a label -- so it could just be root beer
or the like.



no. you caught me ;-) it *was* after 5 !


a @ http://codeforpeople.com/
 
A

ara.t.howard

you mean gvim? does vim do tabs somehow then?

yeah. this is what i use:

cfp:~ > alias|grep screen
alias s='screen -D -R '
alias sdr='screen -d -r '
alias sl='screen -list '


i've tried tags a bit but not lately - should give it another go.
thanks for the tip.
Sorry, just realized that it was Ara's video, so the above response
was for him...

yup, i swear by it. best thing is that moving to linux, using putty
on windows, switching to osx, logging into to a solaris box, working
on fortran, whatever - all use the same 'ide'. this alone buys a ton
of time in the medium to long haul.

cheers.

a @ http://codeforpeople.com/
 

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