A few noob questions

Hey guys, new here. :wink:

Tinkering w/ Ruby (on Windows), working through a book. So far for an
editor I've been using the free ConTEXT and SciTE. Anything better I'm
missing out on?

Also, any decent visual debuggers available? It would be helpful to be
able to walk through my code.

Thanks very much in advance,
Chris
http://www.pretenseofknowledge.com/

路路路

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

Well Notepad++ is a good general purpose editor on windows (I dont know
context). I liked ActiveState Komodo Edit too, which has a free version.

For serious code editing on Windows, the good visual editors are:
- jruby based Redcar (free and really good)
- Sublime Text 2 (in pre-2.0 and technically not free)
both are cross platform, so swapping between UNIXes and MacOS will not
leave you short on familiar tools.

Note for debugging in ruby most people use the plain old ruby-debug

On windows it should be already included in your Ruby version.

To use it, just add the method 'debugger' into your code

i.e.

def do_something
  *debugger* unless everything_ok
  thing_that_could_break
end

The debugger line will launch you into a REPL shell like IRB that lets you
inspect your code in place. Visual Debuggers will feel like such a straight
jacket afterwards. Used in conjunction with a gem like *awesome_print* for
clean inspection of complex data, its a great way to debug.

Failing that, non-free Java IDEs like Ruby Mine may give you a compelling
visual experience. Netbeans is good too, until Oracle booted Ruby support
out of the roadmap and latest version. I haven't used Eclipse in a while,
but I imagine it is still compelling (but Netbeans was better for pure Ruby
and related work), and there is also some work done on bringing Ruby
development into visual studio, though I have no 1st hand experience.

I am at a stage in my Ruby development where I want to break the shackles
of the mouse, as a result I am doing a lot more Vim. Thats a path you want
to try when you got someone to help you through though.

路路路

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 3:57 PM, Chris Meisenzahl <meisenzahl@gmail.com>wrote:

Hey guys, new here. :wink:

Tinkering w/ Ruby (on Windows), working through a book. So far for an
editor I've been using the free ConTEXT and SciTE. Anything better I'm
missing out on?

Also, any decent visual debuggers available? It would be helpful to be
able to walk through my code.

Thanks very much in advance,
Chris
http://www.pretenseofknowledge.com/

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

--
http://richardconroy.blogspot.com | http://twitter.com/RichardConroy

If I were you, I'd go for looking at Sublime Text 2 & RubyMine for GUI
editors & vim/gvim otherwise which has excellent Ruby support along with
just about everything else you'll ever need in an editor. All three are
cross-platform too.

Cheers,

    Phil...

路路路

On 11/1/12 15:57, "Chris Meisenzahl" <meisenzahl@gmail.com> wrote:

Tinkering w/ Ruby (on Windows), working through a book. So far for an
editor I've been using the free ConTEXT and SciTE. Anything better I'm
missing out on?

Also, any decent visual debuggers available? It would be helpful to be
able to walk through my code.

--
Nothing to see here... move along, move along

Editra is a good free editor on Windows, with all standard features. it
even has a code browser for Ruby.

http://editra.org/preview

路路路

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

Thanks, Fred. And I see Submlime 2 just released a much improved version
today:
http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime-text-2-build-2165

路路路

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

If you are looking for a Free IDE: Aptana trough all the way and for all
the ruby things.

路路路

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

WOW, great info, thanks very much!

路路路

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

If I were you, I'd go for looking at Sublime Text 2 & RubyMine for
GUI editors & vim/gvim otherwise which has excellent Ruby support
along with just about everything else you'll ever need in an editor

I'm a big fan of RubyMine. I really like the debugger.

Wayne

Aptana provides a nice Eclipse based IDE

Ruby (plus RoR and a lot of other stuff) is pre-configured
I haven't played with debugging so not sure about that

cheers

Chris Hulan wrote in post #1040392:

Aptana provides a nice Eclipse based IDE

Ruby (plus RoR and a lot of other stuff) is pre-configured
I haven't played with debugging so not sure about that

cheers

Thanks, Chris. I'll check that out, too.

路路路

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