Ruby In Steel beta 0.76 incorporates a number of additional features to
help to tailor the importation and synchronization of Ruby and Rails
projects. You can now selectively exclude hidden files and directories
as well as specific file extensions when importing or synchronizing
projects in the Visual Studio Solution Explorer.
While this is still beta software (and many improvements are still to be
added in forthcoming versions), Ruby In Steel 0.76 already boasts a
large range of development features for editing, debugging, database
development, Rails development and project management.
SapphireSteel Software is also working on a forthcoming commercial
â??Developer Editionâ?? of Ruby In Steel which will feature true
IntelliSense and a much faster debugger.
It’s certainly an interesting project Huw, and a great example of how
extensible Visual Studio can be. But, what do you think the market is
like for people willing to spend hundreds (even thousands) on
Microsoft Visual Studio just so that they can write Ruby on Rails
code? RadRails and TextMate both do a (in my opinion) better job at a
much better price.
It’s certainly an interesting project Huw, and a great example of how
extensible Visual Studio can be. But, what do you think the market is
like for people willing to spend hundreds (even thousands) on
Microsoft Visual Studio just so that they can write Ruby on Rails
code?
We’ve had quite a lot of feedback so I can give you some idea on this.
To date, most of the feedback has come from existing Visual Studio users
who are developing for Ruby or Ruby On Rails and (on the whole) have
been frustrated by having to give up using VS for these projects. On the
basis of this feedback, I’d say that there is a surprising large number
of VS users who are doing some development with Ruby.
That said, we are also getting a fair number of emails from people who
are either considering switching or have already switched to VS in order
to use Ruby On Steel.
For professional development the price of VS represents a tiny fraction
of the overall investment so is unlikely to be a major concern. For
non-professional development, naturally the price would be a turnoff.
On the other hand, MS does hefty discounts for students and academic
users e.g. $49.95 for VS 2005 Standard
