Rails - Jun 2006 - Why is there no Smalltalk-like IDE for Ruby?

I posted this to comp.lang.ruby and comp.lang.smalltalk, and my blog.
I will likely get destroyed, but it will be worth it if at least one
nugget of information helps the Ruby IDE makers.
-----------------------------------------
Hi all --

I shout my question to the entire Ruby + Smalltalk community: Smalltalk
has had amazing IDEs for decades, why not Ruby?  Smalltalkers, Ruby
needs your help!

I''m hoping to start a centralized discussion about this topic, since my
searches have only turned up scattered comments.

Ruby should have IDE support approaching Smalltalk''s based on the
following gross generalization: Ruby and Smalltalk are pretty much the
same.  Yes, I know there are many differences, and not trying to
provoke a Ruby vs. Smalltalk cage-match, but based on language features
and constructs, they are very similar.

What is holding Ruby back?  How has Smalltalk overcome the issues?
What can Ruby tool builders (such as the RadRails folks and, hopefully,
me) learn from the Smalltalk IDE builders?  Reasons I''ve heard for
Ruby''s lack of tool support include:
- Ruby is not a compiled language
- Ruby does not execute in a VM or run-time
- Ruby is a loosely-typed language and has blocks, etc.
- Nobody really cares enough about a Ruby IDE to make one
- vi is all you need!

Regarding the compiled language and VM arguments: what about Ruby''s
irb?  Regarding loose typing, blocks, etc: Smalltalk has these!  I
don''t pretend to understand all of the issues, but I want to learn.
Unless there is something I simply don''t "get", it seems that
the Ruby
community does not care or see the benefit of real tool support, which
leads me to believe that (again) the Smalltalk community is not very
interested in Ruby.

I''ve only been working with Ruby for 8 months after 7 years of Java,
but I almost feel like a Smalltalker by association, having worked
with, and for, Old Dudes Who Know Smalltalk (yes, I said it) my entire
career.  I''ve stepped back into the stone age regarding IDE support
after using VisualAge for Java, Eclipse, and InilliJ IDEA.  No
refactoring, no fast debugger support, not even
code-completion/suggestion.  To the current tools, Ruby is text to
colorize.  Smalltalkers, you''ve cracked this nut years ago, help us
understand how to do it again in Ruby!

-- Joe
http://www.josephmoore.net/

Joseph Moore wrote:
> I posted this to comp.lang.ruby and comp.lang.smalltalk, and my blog.
Hi Joseph. I replied to your question on comp.lang.ruby so I won''t 
repeat what I said here. Instead I''ll pick up on a different point...
> I''ve stepped back into the stone age regarding IDE support
> after using VisualAge for Java, Eclipse, and InilliJ IDEA.  
I am in total agreement. In my view many programmers - particularly 
those working with Open Source and web-development languages, not 
confined to Ruby, but also including the likes of PHP and Python - place 
too little importance on a fully integrated development environment. 
Sure, you can code everything in Notepad if you wish. But the coding 
itself is not the big problem. *Maintaining* the code is where the 
heartache really begins.

I am still in awe of Smalltalk (circa 1980) even now. Here we are, 26 
years later, and other languages are still only in the process of 
catching up with the innovations introduced by Smalltalk all that time 
ago...

Even in Visual Studio, there still isn''t a comparable class browser 
(that is, one that can be used both for hierarchy navigation and 
coding). Nor is there the same level of interactivity (mark and evaluate 
being one of my favourite Smalltalk features). That said, there are good 
IDEs around - Visual Studio and Borland Developer Studio being the ones 
I most often use.
> No refactoring, no fast debugger support, not even
> code-completion/suggestion.  To the current tools, Ruby is text to
> colorize.  
There is no reason why these features canot be added to a Ruby IDE. 
There are a few projects on the go aimed at providing better editing and 
debugging for Ruby. These include RadRails, Arachno, Komodo, RideMe and 
the project in which I am involved - Ruby In Steel.

Ruby is unlikely, in its current form, to be as tightly integrated into 
an IDE as Smalltalk - but then, few languages are. You can, however, 
look forward to IDEs that have code completion, debugging and so on. I 
can''t tell you what other people are working on. What I can say is that
*fast* debugging is a priority of our project (look for this later in 
the year) - and you might not be too surprised to know that we also have 
a few Smalltalk-like goodies which we plan to add later :-)

Not everyone, of course, likes the Smalltalk way of working. I think, 
however, there are now a few interesting Ruby projects under development 
and at least one or two of them may eventually mature into something 
approaching the kind of environment that you are looking for...

best wishes
Huw Collingbourne

http://www.sapphiresteel.com
Ruby Programming In Visual Studio 2005

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Hi Huw --

Thank you for your two responses; both were excellent and insightful.
I agree that many, if not most, developers have no idea how an IDE
could change how they develop and maintain code.  And as you know I''m
very excited about Steel and the promise of fast Ruby debugging (we''ve
talked about it before :) ).

Keep up the good work, and thank you for using your ample Smalltalk
knowledge to develop a Ruby IDE!

-- Joe



On 6/24/06, Huw Collingbourne <huw@darkneon.com>
wrote:
> Joseph Moore wrote:
> > I posted this to comp.lang.ruby and comp.lang.smalltalk, and my blog.
>
> Hi Joseph. I replied to your question on comp.lang.ruby so I won''t
> repeat what I said here. Instead I''ll pick up on a different
point...
>
> > I''ve stepped back into the stone age regarding IDE support
> > after using VisualAge for Java, Eclipse, and InilliJ IDEA.
>
> I am in total agreement. In my view many programmers - particularly
> those working with Open Source and web-development languages, not
> confined to Ruby, but also including the likes of PHP and Python - place
> too little importance on a fully integrated development environment.
> Sure, you can code everything in Notepad if you wish. But the coding
> itself is not the big problem. *Maintaining* the code is where the
> heartache really begins.
>
> I am still in awe of Smalltalk (circa 1980) even now. Here we are, 26
> years later, and other languages are still only in the process of
> catching up with the innovations introduced by Smalltalk all that time
> ago...
>
> Even in Visual Studio, there still isn''t a comparable class
browser
> (that is, one that can be used both for hierarchy navigation and
> coding). Nor is there the same level of interactivity (mark and evaluate
> being one of my favourite Smalltalk features). That said, there are good
> IDEs around - Visual Studio and Borland Developer Studio being the ones
> I most often use.
>
> > No refactoring, no fast debugger support, not even
> > code-completion/suggestion.  To the current tools, Ruby is text to
> > colorize.
>
> There is no reason why these features canot be added to a Ruby IDE.
> There are a few projects on the go aimed at providing better editing and
> debugging for Ruby. These include RadRails, Arachno, Komodo, RideMe and
> the project in which I am involved - Ruby In Steel.
>
> Ruby is unlikely, in its current form, to be as tightly integrated into
> an IDE as Smalltalk - but then, few languages are. You can, however,
> look forward to IDEs that have code completion, debugging and so on. I
> can''t tell you what other people are working on. What I can say is
that
> *fast* debugging is a priority of our project (look for this later in
> the year) - and you might not be too surprised to know that we also have
> a few Smalltalk-like goodies which we plan to add later :-)
>
> Not everyone, of course, likes the Smalltalk way of working. I think,
> however, there are now a few interesting Ruby projects under development
> and at least one or two of them may eventually mature into something
> approaching the kind of environment that you are looking for...
>
> best wishes
> Huw Collingbourne
>
> http://www.sapphiresteel.com
> Ruby Programming In Visual Studio 2005
>
> --
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
>

On 6/24/06, Joseph Moore <joe.moore@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hi Huw --
>
> Thank you for your two responses; both were excellent and insightful.
> I agree that many, if not most, developers have no idea how an IDE
> could change how they develop and maintain code.  And as you know
I''m
> very excited about Steel and the promise of fast Ruby debugging
(we''ve
> talked about it before :) ).
Just curious...do you have to purchase the full Visual Studio to use
SaphireSteel? What''s  the cheapest route to go for those of us who
don''t currently own a licensed copy of VS?

Thanks,
JB

J B wrote:
> 
> Just curious...do you have to purchase the full Visual Studio to use
> SaphireSteel? What''s  the cheapest route to go for those of us who
> don''t currently own a licensed copy of VS?

I''m afraid we do not support the free Express editions of VS. We would 
if we could but Microsoft has not enabled the plugin capabilities of 
those versions so we have been unable to support them. Ruby In Steel 
requires a minimum of Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition. The full 
price of this edition is $299 but if you shop around you may get it for 
about $160. If you are a student, MS does an academic price which brings 
it down to $50 or less.

best wishes
Huw Collingbourne
http://www.sapphiresteel.com

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

> I''m afraid we do not support the free Express editions of VS. We
would
> if we could but Microsoft has not enabled the plugin capabilities of 
> those versions so we have been unable to support them. Ruby In Steel 
> requires a minimum of Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition. The full 
> price of this edition is $299
add to that Windows XP Professional, which $189? $249? i admire your efforts, i
guess you dont mind committing to a niche of niches, with the $500 outlay and
microsoft requirement eliminating probably 80% then 95% on top of that potential
developers.

heres two Ruby IDE''s, written in ruby. as far as i can tell both are
free and cross-platform:

http://freeride.rubyforge.org/

http://www.mondrian-ide.com/

add mongrel and ruby-gtk2mozembed and youve got a nifty full-stack
ide/client/server rolled into one..

carmen wrote:
> i guess you dont mind committing to a niche of niches ...
Windows has been called many things but I''ve never heard it called 
"niche" before. As someone who has come to Ruby and Rails from a
Windows
and Visual Studio background, I was surprised by the primitive nature of 
the tools available. Eclipse with the RadRails plugin is ok but rather 
slow (14 secs to start up compard with 2 for VS) - I assume because
it''s
written in Java. RIDE-ME looks promising but still has a way to go.

It''s great to see some competition in the IDE field for Ruby. If 
Sapphire in Steel can match what the free tools do and add the other 
advantages of VS, no doubt the free tools will have to catch up, which 
will be good for everyone. Also, corporates may find it easier to adopt 
Ruby and Rails if it doesn''t mean a completely new toolset.

Julian

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

On 6/25/06, Julian Gall <julian.gall@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Windows has been called many things but I''ve never heard it called
> "niche" before. As someone who has come to Ruby and Rails from a
Windows
> and Visual Studio background, I was surprised by the primitive nature of
> the tools available. Eclipse with the RadRails plugin is ok but rather
> slow (14 secs to start up compard with 2 for VS) - I assume because
it''s
> written in Java. RIDE-ME looks promising but still has a way to go.
Ruby does not have much in the area of IDE. But for web development
like in Rails that really does not but me. A Ruby IDE is all needed
for normal Ruby. But I just don''t see how a typical IDE can help my in
developing RoR applications. I don''t see a IDE like Visual Studio
offering me anything that I need that TextMate does not offer. Things
like breakpoints and other debugging tools are absolutely vital for
desktop development but I find them useless when developing web
software.

The 3 develpment tools I use are iTerm, TextMate and the TextMate
plugin for Rails. And I have found that when trying some of the IDE''s
out there that I am loosing a lot more than i gain. So there is more
sophisticated autocomplete in those tools. That has honestly not been
my problem with TM.

However getting something more like the Smalltalk IDE. That is a whole
different issue.

-- 
--------------
Jon Gretar Borgthorsson
http://www.jongretar.net/

I don''t mean to offend in any way, but I think the argument about Tools
is completely ridiculous, considering the rates that we as developers 
should be making. In MANY other industries (let''s say construction) the
cost of the tools required to startup a new business are many factors 
greater than our own. I can go out and buy a Powerbook and a license of 
TextMate for less than 5% of my yearly income. For that kind of 
low-overhead, it''s really hard to even argue about the development 
environment costs. The greatest single cost in any of our endeavors is 
human time. Not even when it''s time for deployment can hardware costs, 
bandwidth, etc. come close to the costs of the right people.

Rails is the tool that exactly appeals to this problem, it allows you 
to get the cruft out of the way when starting on an application. And 
Ruby is a great language that keeps us happy when we go far beyond 
scaffolding and what Active Record provides for us.

It''s the mentality of these "corporates" that Rails is in a
battle
against. The lean-mean "agile" way of doing things vs. corporate
bloat,
big consulting firms, and industrial-like scalability.

We care about using the right tools, which is why you will find many 
productive programmers in the Rails camp, using a MacBook.


</rant>

-------------
Timothy Johnson
www.foundinteractive.com



On Jun 25, 2006, at 2:48 PM, Julian Gall wrote:
> carmen wrote:
>> i guess you dont mind committing to a niche of niches ...
>
> Windows has been called many things but I''ve never heard it called
> "niche" before. As someone who has come to Ruby and Rails from a 
> Windows
> and Visual Studio background, I was surprised by the primitive nature 
> of
> the tools available. Eclipse with the RadRails plugin is ok but rather
> slow (14 secs to start up compard with 2 for VS) - I assume because 
> it''s
> written in Java. RIDE-ME looks promising but still has a way to go.
>
> It''s great to see some competition in the IDE field for Ruby. If
> Sapphire in Steel can match what the free tools do and add the other
> advantages of VS, no doubt the free tools will have to catch up, which
> will be good for everyone. Also, corporates may find it easier to adopt
> Ruby and Rails if it doesn''t mean a completely new toolset.
>
> Julian
>
> -- 
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails

<....
> But I just don''t see how a typical IDE can help my in
> developing RoR applications. I don''t see a IDE like Visual Studio
> offering me anything that I need that TextMate does not offer. Things
> like breakpoints and other debugging tools are absolutely vital for
> desktop development but I find them useless when developing web
> software.
<...>

Exactly. I do believe one may need to have VS for coding in ASP.NET,
but for RoR - Textmate is good enough. You don''t get so much overhead
that you''d
need sophisticated IDE to handle it.


Regards,
Rimantas
--
http://rimantas.com/

J?n Borg??rsson wrote:
> I don''t see a IDE like Visual Studio
> offering me anything that I need that TextMate does not offer. Things
> like breakpoints and other debugging tools are absolutely vital for
> desktop development but I find them useless when developing web
> software.
> 
I''m interested to hear you say that. Why do you find debugging useless 
for web development? Is it because you feel that the nature of web 
development itself does not benefit from debugging or because the 
debugging tools presently available aren''t sufficiently powerful for
the
task?

Personally, I would like to have the best debugging tools possible for 
Rails applications. Suffice to say that we are trying to work out ways 
of implementing some :-) so I have a keen personal interest in 
understanding the kinds of tools which Rails developers would find 
useful (even if those tools do not currently exist).

best wishes
Huw
http://www.sapphiresteel.com

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

> I''m interested to hear you say that. Why do you find debugging
(and an IDE) useless
> for web development?
i think two things: rails code is very concise, so eclipse/VS-ish
syntactic-generation/intellisense gunk isnt necessitated, aside from the basic
snippets/tab-completions..

and its not THAT hard to page between vim/textmate/notepad and firefox.

of course it could be improved. whenever an error occurs, id like a text editor
to slide down from the top of the screen with the insertion point at the
erroneous line, and another pane to slide up from the bottom with
./script/breakpointer attached to the current request instance. in development
mode, every page/partial has a small set of icons, to do things like reset
state, edit the source, etc.

one thing id like to see is full Ruby control over mozilla''s DOM tree.
right now it can only do a few things like embed a Gecko window and feed it a
url.. it would certainly make the aforementioned ''Rails IDE''
simpler implementation-wise..
;;

On 6/25/06, Huw Collingbourne <huw@darkneon.com>
wrote:
> I''m interested to hear you say that. Why do you find debugging
useless
> for web development? Is it because you feel that the nature of web
> development itself does not benefit from debugging or because the
> debugging tools presently available aren''t sufficiently powerful
for the
> task?
Well...

For example. When an error occurs I get the location of that error.
Since I am using the TM plugin I can just click that error and TM
opens up the right file and the correct line. I just don''t need
anything more. And I feel like offering more is likely to complicate
things. Sure sometimes I might want more but that is an exception
rather than the rule. And ultimately by the end of the day I will have
saved a lot of time by just manually working through the exceptions
rather than having something I don''t need for every single error. I
just simply have never been in a situation where I would have
benefited by having the ability to dissect my code using breakpointers
and variable watchers.

Lets face it. Almost all errors that we do in Ruby are single line
errors because of either spelling or wrong parameters. And almost all
our errors are usually corrected without us having to backtrace
through the code and various classes and methods. When something is
wrong we get an error message with a filename an line number. And in
almost all cases we can just simply fix that line.

To summarize. What we need from a Ruby on Rails IDE is not some fancy
debugging tools and some breakpointers. We need more of a management
IDE. Something that helps us organizing the code and get a real
oversight of what we are doing. And of course it needs to be a kick
ass editor. TM is simply the best editor I have used. The text relate
tools are the most powerful available and only rivaled by vim and
emacs. However the project management is as simple as it gets. The
class browser of the Smalltalk IDE with the text editing power of
TextMate is what most need.

At leas that is my feeling. Interested to hear from others in that subject.

-- 
--------------
Jon Gretar Borgthorsson
http://www.jongretar.net/

On 6/25/06, carmen <_@whats-your.name> wrote:
> of course it could be improved. whenever an error occurs, id like a text
editor to slide down from the top of the screen with the insertion point at the
erroneous line, and another pane to slide up from the bottom with
./script/breakpointer attached to the current request instance. in development
mode, every page/partial has a small set of icons, to do things like reset
state, edit the source, etc.
So basically.... You want Smalltalk.... ;)


-- 
--------------
Jon Gretar Borgthorsson
http://www.jongretar.net/

On 6/25/06, Huw Collingbourne <huw@darkneon.com>
wrote:
> I''m interested to hear you say that. Why do you find debugging
useless
> for web development? Is it because you feel that the nature of web
> development itself does not benefit from debugging or because the
> debugging tools presently available aren''t sufficiently powerful
for
> the task?
I''ll be honest, Huw. Even in C++, I *rarely* use the debugger. I will
almost always rely on print debugging as the first step. It also tends
to help me find the problem far faster than with the debugger.

The problem with a lot of applications -- and web applications fit into
this -- is that they rely on a lot of loops and that it may take dozens
of loops to get to the source of the problem. It is often easier and
more productive to analyze debug output than step through a debugger.

I''ve watched some of my colleagues debug through ASP applications and I
pity them. It''s painful to the point of lunacy.

-austin
-- 
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com * http://www.halostatue.ca/
               * austin@halostatue.ca * http://www.halostatue.ca/feed/
               * austin@zieglers.ca

> I''ll be honest, Huw. Even in C++, I *rarely* use the debugger. I
will
> almost always rely on print debugging as the first step. It also tends
> to help me find the problem far faster than with the debugger.
with my rapid-reload style, 99% of the time the bug is at the current line in
the edit - i havent even felt the need to install any of these ''jump to
line'' things. and syntax errors are pretty much impossible, atleast
with my emacs, since the rest of the document turns pink, or similar, so its
obvious to spot

well hopefully Huw doesnt listen to our discouragement and proceeds to make a
kickass IDE anyway :D

On 6/25/06, carmen <_@whats-your.name> wrote:
> well hopefully Huw doesnt listen to our discouragement and proceeds to make
a kickass IDE anyway :D
A lot of people say they don''t need an IDE to do Rails.  Well duh, if
you''re getting by without one then you don''t NEED it.

But the tone of these "I don''t need an IDE" comments suggests
that an
IDE would be bothersome.  That''s pretty laughable, assuming someone
comes out with a good, simple IDE.  TextMate with code completion
(yes, I know about snippets), class browser, and refactoring support
would kick major ass.  Sure we do fine without them right now, but I
doubt I could find someone who genuinely does not want those tools.

Pat

On 6/25/06, Julian Gall <julian.gall@gmail.com>
wrote:
> carmen wrote:
> > i guess you dont mind committing to a niche of niches ...
>
> Windows has been called many things but I''ve never heard it called
> "niche" before.
I''d like to hear people refer to Windows as a niche more often :)

Peter

> Lets face it. Almost all errors that we do in Ruby are single line
> errors because of either spelling or wrong parameters.
Wouldn''t that issue be solved by intellisense and design-time syntax
checking (like VS has)? And if yes, that time would easily off-set any
cost of the tool :-)

In addition, usually the the project the more complex bugs there are.
I am working on a fairly large project right now (approx. 500 business
objects) and most of the bugs are not syntax issues. Obviously a nice
debugger would help here...

> Personally, I would like to have the best debugging tools possible for
> Rails applications. Suffice to say that we are trying to work out ways
> of implementing some :-) so I have a keen personal interest in
> understanding the kinds of tools which Rails developers would find
> useful (even if those tools do not currently exist).
How about a "feature" where the IDE would let me correct the code
WHILE debugging without requireing to restart the server/resubmit the
request? Same functionallity that VB has had for ages....(ducks for
cover)

Raf

On 6/26/06, Rafael Szuminski <raf1hh@gmail.com>
wrote:
> > Lets face it. Almost all errors that we do in Ruby are single line
> > errors because of either spelling or wrong parameters.
> Wouldn''t that issue be solved by intellisense and design-time
syntax
> checking (like VS has)? And if yes, that time would easily off-set any
> cost of the tool :-)
Except that useful intellisense is damned-near next to impossible in
Ruby the way that Ruby works. And, frankly, I find that IDEs *get in
my way* of developing. They require that you think a particular way to
program. Well, guess what: I don''t think that way. I am at least as
productive -- and on more platforms -- as my colleagues who depend on
VS for their C++ work. I honestly have yet to need anything more
complex than syntax highlighting for gvim with Ruby development.

-austin
-- 
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com * http://www.halostatue.ca/
               * austin@halostatue.ca * http://www.halostatue.ca/feed/
               * austin@zieglers.ca

On 6/26/06, Rafael Szuminski <raf1hh@gmail.com>
wrote:
> > Personally, I would like to have the best debugging tools possible for
> > Rails applications. Suffice to say that we are trying to work out ways
> > of implementing some :-) so I have a keen personal interest in
> > understanding the kinds of tools which Rails developers would find
> > useful (even if those tools do not currently exist).
> How about a "feature" where the IDE would let me correct the code
> WHILE debugging without requireing to restart the server/resubmit the
> request? Same functionallity that VB has had for ages....(ducks for
> cover)
This, of course, misunderstands the fundamental behaviour of Ruby. I
don''t think that this would be possible in the current Ruby
environment. It may be possible in future environments. It''s certainly
beyond the scope of a mere IDE. It''s a language/interpreter change.

-austin
-- 
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com * http://www.halostatue.ca/
               * austin@halostatue.ca * http://www.halostatue.ca/feed/
               * austin@zieglers.ca

Great conversation, everyone.  I''d like to extend an extra-hardy
''thank you'' to Huw, Jeff Rose, and Raf.

But (and isn''t there always a "but", and usually a
"butt"?), I feel
that one argument/theme is orthogonal to the "Why is there no
Smalltalk-like IDE for Ruby?" discussion: the "We don''t need
one"
argument.  Several people have stated that they just can''t imagine
when they would use full featured IDE functionality in their daily
Ruby or Rails development.

The key word here is "imagine".  I''m willing to bet that most
of those
who don''t see the need for a full featured Java or Smalltalk-like IDE
have never used one, have never worked on a large-scale application
with an IDE, or have never maintained a complicated application with
and IDE.  They have never had that "ah-ha!" moment where hours of
tedious work was accomplished in seconds, and the doors what they
*could be doing* were opened.

And they have *definitely* never had those tools taken away.
Otherwise their comments would not be in this discussion, and they
would not reply to this post.  And if you are thinking about hitting
the Reply button to say "but it isn''t very hard to figure out X or
to
fix Y or to just remember Z", then, as Raf said before, what if you
didn''t have to?  What else could you be doing?

The "what I could be doing instead of X" part is key: rich tools can
lessen the, well, crappy parts of software development and help the
developer focus on adding value.  This gets deeper into why I care so
much about this, deeper into my philosophy about software development:
I am not paid to prove how much I can memorize.  I am not paid to
prove how well I can code while trapped on an island with only a bash
shell, vi, and a college CS textbook.  I am not paid to prove that I
can quickly cycle between and translate between 5 unrelated tools.  I
am not paid to be an Amish programmer.  I am not paid to be a
"tougher" programmer.  Instead, I am paid to produce value.  And if a
rich toolset can help me produce value, and maintain value, then I
want that toolset.  Not only that, my employer/customer/client wants
me to have that toolset.

And a funny thing happens when I add a lot of value: I *do* feel proud
of myself.  I do feel proud of what I''m producing.  I get excited
about my projects.  I forget that I''m getting paid and instead think
about how much fun I''m having.  I stop thinking of my code as code and
starting thinking of it as art.

As the great philosophers Cinderella once said, you "Don''t Know
What
You Got (Till It''s Gone)".

-- Joe


On 6/25/06, Rafael Szuminski <raf1hh@gmail.com>
wrote:
> > Personally, I would like to have the best debugging tools possible for
> > Rails applications. Suffice to say that we are trying to work out ways
> > of implementing some :-) so I have a keen personal interest in
> > understanding the kinds of tools which Rails developers would find
> > useful (even if those tools do not currently exist).
>
> How about a "feature" where the IDE would let me correct the code
> WHILE debugging without requireing to restart the server/resubmit the
> request? Same functionallity that VB has had for ages....(ducks for
> cover)
>
> Raf
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
>

On 6/26/06, Joseph Moore <joe.moore@gmail.com>
wrote:
> The key word here is "imagine".  I''m willing to bet that
most of those
> who don''t see the need for a full featured Java or Smalltalk-like
IDE
> have never used one, have never worked on a large-scale application
> with an IDE, or have never maintained a complicated application with
> and IDE.  They have never had that "ah-ha!" moment where hours of
> tedious work was accomplished in seconds, and the doors what they
> *could be doing* were opened.
The ah-ha moments that I''ve had have *never* come from the IDE, Mr
Moore. I have used probably a half-dozen IDEs at various times in my
development career -- and aside from nice interactive debuggers,
they''re all good at generating poor code and helping developers forget
how to write good, tight code. ;)
> And they have *definitely* never had those tools taken away.
> Otherwise their comments would not be in this discussion, and they
> would not reply to this post.  And if you are thinking about hitting
> the Reply button to say "but it isn''t very hard to figure out
X or to
> fix Y or to just remember Z", then, as Raf said before, what if you
> didn''t have to?  What else could you be doing?
Again, you''re wrong. I had to do something in C++ recently that
wasn''t
supported by the IDE, but saved us a *lot* of time and heartache in
development. For the first 15 instances of this something, I did it
manually. After that, I wrote a code generator -- in Ruby -- and now I
routinely generate 70 classes to do what I need for this part of the
code. The IDE didn''t support me here. I supported me. I had a need, I
got the job done. In part because I''m not constrained to thinking
"what can the IDE do for me?"

If I got used to a tool and it was taken away, I would either try to
figure out how to use the tool anyway -- or I would make an
alternative, if the tool mattered enough.
> [..]  I
> am not paid to be an Amish programmer.  I am not paid to be a
> "tougher" programmer.  Instead, I am paid to produce value.  And
if a
> rich toolset can help me produce value, and maintain value, then I
> want that toolset.  Not only that, my employer/customer/client wants
> me to have that toolset.
Yes, that''s true. But IDEs will only provide x% more value. Smarter
programming -- and being willing to roll your own tools if you need --
will often provide x^2% more value.

Reality check: if you know your low-level tools well, you will often
be as productive or more productive than you would ever be in an IDE.
There are some things for which an IDE is perfect. Debugging *can* be
one (but more often than not, you''ll have to loop through a bunch of
code; I *always* start with debug output statements -- tracers, if you
will). GUI design can be another. IntelliSense, however, is of limited
use. I''ll use it from time to time when I''m having to deal
with a
particularly large and stupid API (C++ STL or MFC anyone?), but I can
often get my code working faster without it getting in the way.

You might want to be careful with your assumptions. They might bite
you on the ass some day.

-austin
-- 
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com * http://www.halostatue.ca/
               * austin@halostatue.ca * http://www.halostatue.ca/feed/
               * austin@zieglers.ca

<...>
> The key word here is "imagine".  I''m willing to bet that
most of those
> who don''t see the need for a full featured Java or Smalltalk-like
IDE
> have never used one, have never worked on a large-scale application
> with an IDE, or have never maintained a complicated application with
> and IDE.  They have never had that "ah-ha!" moment where hours of
> tedious work was accomplished in seconds, and the doors what they
> *could be doing* were opened.
Assumptions, assumptions. Did you forget that Ruby is not Java and workflow
is not exactly the same?

<...>
> The "what I could be doing instead of X" part is key: rich tools
can
> lessen the, well, crappy parts of software development and help the
> developer focus on adding value.
<...>

The thing is - many of the crappy parts of software development are
by design removed from Ruby on Rails.


Regards,
Rimantas
--
http://rimantas.com/

Thanks for all the ideas, folks!

While I certainly do not believe that a good IDE makes for good coding, 
you will not be surprised to know that my prejudice is very much in 
favour of an IDE ;-)

I have been through the text-edit/compile/debug style of development 
many years ago and do not feel any great desire to return to it. In my 
opinion, the Smalltalk IDE developed in the late ''70s/early
''80s was one
of the most important innovations in programming and, yes, I too had 
that "aha!" moment...!

Incidentally, a few people have remarked that certain IDE features would 
be ''impossible'' for Ruby. I don''t want to say too
much on that subject
at the moment. However, let''s just say that I don''t think that
they are
all necessarily impossible. Difficult, yes. But not impossible...

best wishes
Huw
http://www.sapphiresteel.com

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

On Mon, 26 Jun 2006 02:08:57 -0400, Austin Ziegler wrote:
> Except that useful intellisense is damned-near next to impossible in
> Ruby the way that Ruby works.
That said, IIUC someone''s working on that for RDT during the Summer of
Code.  Obviously, it can''t be perfect, with method_missing, but perhaps
they''ll surprise us.

Jay Levitt

carmen wrote:
>> I''m afraid we do not support the free Express editions of VS.
We would
>> if we could but Microsoft has not enabled the plugin capabilities of 
>> those versions so we have been unable to support them. Ruby In Steel 
>> requires a minimum of Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition. The full 
>> price of this edition is $299
> 
> add to that Windows XP Professional, which $189? $249? i admire your 
> efforts, i guess you dont mind committing to a niche of niches, with the 
> $500 outlay and microsoft requirement eliminating probably 80% then 95% 
> on top of that potential developers.
*sigh*
Here''s another that wants everything for free...



-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Joseph Moore wrote:
> Great conversation, everyone.  I''d like to extend an extra-hardy
> ''thank you'' to Huw, Jeff Rose, and Raf.
> 
> But (and isn''t there always a "but", and usually a
"butt"?), I feel
> that one argument/theme is orthogonal to the "Why is there no
> Smalltalk-like IDE for Ruby?" discussion: the "We don''t
need one"
> argument.  Several people have stated that they just can''t imagine
> when they would use full featured IDE functionality in their daily
> Ruby or Rails development.
> 
I agree.
You have those people on the board that just want to argue without 
putting much thought into want they are saying.
But most of them just want us to believe that they are the "SUPER" 
developer.
The way that they talk about themselves, you wonder if they even need a 
computer at all.

As I said, I agree with you Mr. Moore and I also believe that Ruby would 
be in a much better place if it had a great IDE.

Please don''t respond to this Austin, because I''m done with
this thread.

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Austin Ziegler wrote:
> The ah-ha moments that I''ve had have *never* come from the IDE, Mr
> Moore. I have used probably a half-dozen IDEs at various times in my
> development career -- and aside from nice interactive debuggers,
> they''re all good at generating poor code and helping developers
forget
> how to write good, tight code. ;)
I''ve used as many IDEs and a number of editors for various development.
I''m typically not a fan of code-generation; but I had an ah-shit moment
lately.  I work primarily with Java in my non-crime-fighting day-job.  
We''ve recently had to switch back to the VS IDE and get a bridge DLL 
working for a client to call into our application via web services.  
I''ve been hunting for a plugin, but I can''t find even a simple
"property
getter/setter" generator; so I''ve had to code a *bunch* of tedious
stuff
by hand.  (The point here is not that I''m stupid because I
couldn''t
google enough to find xxx plugin, but that my productivity has suffered 
greatly by the lack of an easily obtainable generator.  Today, the 
morning will be spent writing a Ruby script for C# code generation.)

I''m glad you don''t need an IDE.  I don''t *need* one
either...  But
sometimes they sure come in handy if they are written well.  I would 
dare say they are downright indispensable in a large-sized Java app.

I could list a long list of things I love about Eclipse (including it''s
intelligence of Java) and a few things I don''t like about it (freezing 
while editing JSP pages, etc).  An IDE could reduce the frequency of 
some questions on this list (for instance when an object is not 
recognized in the includes paths, etc).  It could also provide many 
benefits for those who would like one.  It could probably even be 
written in Ruby.  :)

-Curtis

On Mon, 2006-06-26 at 15:12 +0200, Reggie Mr wrote:
> carmen wrote:
> >> I''m afraid we do not support the free Express editions of
VS. We would
> >> if we could but Microsoft has not enabled the plugin capabilities
of
> >> those versions so we have been unable to support them. Ruby In
Steel
> >> requires a minimum of Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition. The
full
> >> price of this edition is $299
> > 
> > add to that Windows XP Professional, which $189? $249? i admire your 
> > efforts, i guess you dont mind committing to a niche of niches, with
the
> > $500 outlay and microsoft requirement eliminating probably 80% then
95%
> > on top of that potential developers.
> 
> *sigh*
> Here''s another that wants everything for free...
----
not an entirely uncommon notion from a Linux/BSD user - please don''t
dis
on the logic.

Those that use Linux or BSD generally recognize the limitations which
are narrowing all the time.

I will point out that while I am developing software for a non-profit
organization, the development environment being a "free" source is
important not only because of the 1-time cost for the development tools
not being expended but also no need to furnish the same tools for others
who collaborate, no need to purchase an endless stream of
''feature'' or
''compatibility'' upgrades, no subjugation to corporate whim
which may get
bought out or simply discontinue a product.

Craig

I have never used smalltalk and I am a RoR newb...but I''ve been using 
RadRails (www.radrails.org) and it''s pretty decent considering
it''s free
(eclipse based so also cross-platform).  It''s made specifically for 
Rails, so I guess some specific Rails nice-to-have features should be 
available either now or soon if it''s still under developpment. 

P.S.  No idea why but the at the time of writting this the link was not 
working...

--
Jackdan



Joseph Moore wrote:
> I posted this to comp.lang.ruby and comp.lang.smalltalk, and my blog.
> I will likely get destroyed, but it will be worth it if at least one
> nugget of information helps the Ruby IDE makers.
> -----------------------------------------
> Hi all --
>
> I shout my question to the entire Ruby + Smalltalk community: Smalltalk
> has had amazing IDEs for decades, why not Ruby?  Smalltalkers, Ruby
> needs your help!
>
> I''m hoping to start a centralized discussion about this topic,
since my
> searches have only turned up scattered comments.
>
> Ruby should have IDE support approaching Smalltalk''s based on the
> following gross generalization: Ruby and Smalltalk are pretty much the
> same.  Yes, I know there are many differences, and not trying to
> provoke a Ruby vs. Smalltalk cage-match, but based on language features
> and constructs, they are very similar.
>
> What is holding Ruby back?  How has Smalltalk overcome the issues?
> What can Ruby tool builders (such as the RadRails folks and, hopefully,
> me) learn from the Smalltalk IDE builders?  Reasons I''ve heard for
> Ruby''s lack of tool support include:
> - Ruby is not a compiled language
> - Ruby does not execute in a VM or run-time
> - Ruby is a loosely-typed language and has blocks, etc.
> - Nobody really cares enough about a Ruby IDE to make one
> - vi is all you need!
>
> Regarding the compiled language and VM arguments: what about
Ruby''s
> irb?  Regarding loose typing, blocks, etc: Smalltalk has these!  I
> don''t pretend to understand all of the issues, but I want to
learn.
> Unless there is something I simply don''t "get", it seems
that the Ruby
> community does not care or see the benefit of real tool support, which
> leads me to believe that (again) the Smalltalk community is not very
> interested in Ruby.
>
> I''ve only been working with Ruby for 8 months after 7 years of
Java,
> but I almost feel like a Smalltalker by association, having worked
> with, and for, Old Dudes Who Know Smalltalk (yes, I said it) my entire
> career.  I''ve stepped back into the stone age regarding IDE
support
> after using VisualAge for Java, Eclipse, and InilliJ IDEA.  No
> refactoring, no fast debugger support, not even
> code-completion/suggestion.  To the current tools, Ruby is text to
> colorize.  Smalltalkers, you''ve cracked this nut years ago, help
us
> understand how to do it again in Ruby!
>
> -- Joe
> http://www.josephmoore.net/
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
>
>

Huw, I''ve had a browse of your work and love where you''re
going with it.  Those that love their textmate snippets etc. can stick with them
if they want to (they look great).  I''ve used a Smalltalk VM and would
love those features to be available in an IDE.  If someone doesn''t like
a tool they don''t have to use it but the more tools that are developed
to assist in the development process the better.  A "good" IDE can
greatly assist in the development process.

Now if I can just squeeze VIM into Visual Studio.

Appreciate the effort.

Ross