# Irb Power User's Guide

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/irb-power-users-guide/86107>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [February 20, 2007, 12:18am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/irb-power-users-guide/86107 "2007-02-20T00:18:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/e47774/32.png) [@bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bruparel)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2007, 12:18am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/irb-power-users-guide/86107/1 "2007-02-20T00:18:41Z")

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The more I get into ruby, more I realize the power of “irb”. Long time  
ago, when I was developing in Visual Basic and Access, I use to use the  
“Immediate Window” (in Microsoft’s terminology) very effectively. The  
whole Ruby environment is beginning to remind me of that.

If anyone can point me to irb Power User Link(s), I will greatly  
appreciate it. Any other links to interactive development tools are  
quite welcome too. At the same time, I want to be aware of some of the  
best practices that more experienced Ruby developers have gathered, and  
be able to leverage that knowledge.

Thanks.

Bharat

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**Author:** ![bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/e47774/32.png) [@bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bruparel)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2007, 12:32am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/irb-power-users-guide/86107/2 "2007-02-20T00:32:14Z")

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Hello,

I’ve asked a similar question in a thread called REPL-driven  
development.

Search for it.

Unfortunately, in my opinion there’s not much there.

SLIME for LISP is the best example I know of using an interactive  
prompt. Search for screencasts of it, LISPers do VERY nifty things in  
their REPLs.

There was a screencast of web-development with some LISP framework  
that used LispWorks, but it showed REPL use that impressed me a lot. I  
don’t remember which framework, but you can google and may find it.

Aur

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**Author:** ![bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/e47774/32.png) [@bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bruparel)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2007, 12:37am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/irb-power-users-guide/86107/3 "2007-02-20T00:37:15Z")

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If you google it you’ll find a bunch of blogs with scattered tricks,  
my own included, but nobody’s really written up a power-user’s guide  
that I’m aware of (yet).

A nice interactive dev tool for Rails, Mac-only unfortunately, is the  
Footnotes plugin.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/e47774/32.png) [@bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bruparel)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2007, 12:38am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/irb-power-users-guide/86107/4 "2007-02-20T00:38:15Z")

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And! There’s a Rails app for debugging Rails apps called Gyre. Again  
Rails-centric, but handy if you’re working on that sort of thing.