Some questions about serious Ruby development

maz · July 11, 2006, 11:58am

I like Ruby. I like it more than Python. It’s my PERL replacement. I
used to use PERL for automated file management but I have switched to
Ruby
because it is awesome and PERL blows. To be fair, I thought PERL was
awesome at the time but it’s old news, now…

So, here I come, Ruby!

I'm starting to think that I can use Ruby for some serious software

development. I think a hardcore application can be written in a careful
combination of Ruby and C++ (and some other stuff, too!). So, I did a
bit
of looking around which has only caused me to develop some questions…

Can anyone recommend a good IDE?  Ah, the tired IDE question...  I

did a
search on groups.google on this subject and, yes, it is a common
question.
However, every instance of it seems to have the same theme. Vi(m) is
the
greatest text editor out there (I found Emacs too hard to learn).
Syntax
highlighting is highly overrated and auto-completion is useless. What I
need from an IDE is a debugger! Even if it were as simple as the
ability to
place breakpoints, step into and over lines of code, display evaluation
results (like what IRB does), and list variables in scope. It would
also be
nice if it would let me evaluate methods of variables in scope, so I can
try
to get the state of various objects. Seriously, I’m tired of printf
debugging (not that anyone uses printf in Ruby)…

Can anyone recommend a good... I don't know the proper term for this

but… a GUI toolkit? A widget toolkit? Something that allows me to
create
and manage windows and widgets to put in those windows. I’ll need the
ability to create new (custom) widgets and it would be nice if it were
cross
platform…

Well, those are my questions, for now.  I'll certainly be back if I

have
any more and I will, of course, continue to lurk here as well as answer
the
few questions I think I can answer competently! I’m really excited
about
doing some serious Ruby development and I look forward to whatever
suggestions I get!
Thank you for your help…

maz · July 11, 2006, 12:40pm

What I need from an IDE is a debugger! Even if it were as simple as the
ability to place breakpoints, step into and over lines of code, display
evaluation results (like what IRB does), and list variables in scope.

You don’t say if you have Visual Studio. If so, you can try out our Ruby
In
Steel IDE. This has breakpoints, watch variables, locals, autos, step
into/over, run to, evaluate in a command window, syntax error location
plus
code colouring/collapsing, Rails development tools etc. Not yet
IntelliSense
but we are working on that at the moment…

Download the latest here: http://www.sapphiresteel.com

best wishes
Huw C.

maz · July 11, 2006, 2:34pm

On Jul 11, 2006, at 5:55 AM, Just Another Victim of the Ambient
Morality wrote:

need from an IDE is a debugger! Even if it were as simple as the
ability to
place breakpoints, step into and over lines of code, display
evaluation
results (like what IRB does), and list variables in scope. It
would also be
nice if it would let me evaluate methods of variables in scope, so
I can try
to get the state of various objects. Seriously, I’m tired of printf
debugging (not that anyone uses printf in Ruby)…

Just to take things in a whole different direction, are you using
test driven development? I’ve found that TDD has eliminated a lot of
my need for debugging. It’s a little like that printf debugging
except that the printf’s become asserts and you don’t have to throw
them away. They stay useful.

That being said, Eclipse’s RDT is supposed to handle debugging, but I
haven’t had much luck with it so far.
-Mat

maz · July 11, 2006, 2:44pm

On 7/11/06, Just Another Victim of the Ambient M.
[email protected] wrote:

Syntax highlighting is highly overrated and auto-completion is useless.

What I need from an IDE is a debugger! Even if it were as simple as the ability to
place breakpoints, step into and over lines of code, display evaluation
results (like what IRB does), and list variables in scope. It would also be
nice if it would let me evaluate methods of variables in scope, so I can try
to get the state of various objects. Seriously, I’m tired of printf
debugging (not that anyone uses printf in Ruby)…

Two suggestions, check out the breakpoint gem – it is pretty much
what you say you want from a debugger. If what you really want is a
full IDE with a good integrated debugger, then you should check out
ArachnoEdit (ruby-ide.com). It is a commercial product, still in beta
that seems to get developed in a series of sprints. It has a custom
version of Ruby with a C extension for much faster debugging/stepping.

Can anyone recommend a good... I don't know the proper term for this

but… a GUI toolkit?

Check the archive, we just had this discussion: FXRuby, QtRuby,
wxRuby seem to be the primary choices.

pth

maz · July 11, 2006, 3:18pm

“Just Another Victim of the Ambient M.” [email protected]
writes:

What I
need from an IDE is a debugger!
ArachnoRuby dot.

Have a nice day
Friedrich

maz · July 11, 2006, 5:52pm

Just Another Victim of the Ambient M. wrote:

display evaluation results (like what IRB does)

I use the following method to do that:

def describe code

takes a string to be eval’ed and prints it along with showing the

return value
sep = ’ => ’
begin
result = eval(code)
puts code + sep + result.inspect
return result
rescue Exception => e
puts code + sep + e.to_s
return nil
end
end

I then can issue the following to get a nice printout, and also get the
returned value of the statement. Example:

my_array = describe “Range.new(1, 5).to_a”

Would output “Range.new(1, 5).to_a => [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]” and also assign
my_array properly.

maz · July 11, 2006, 7:07pm

John wrote:

def describe code

takes a string to be eval’ed and prints it along

with showing the return value

sep = ’ => ’
begin
result = eval(code)
puts code + sep + result.inspect
return result
rescue Exception => e
puts code + sep + e.to_s
return nil
end
end

Hi John,

You can write than method even more terse:

def describe code
sep = ’ => ’
result = eval(code)
puts code + sep + result.inspect
return result
rescue Exception => e
puts code + sep + e.to_s
# puts already returns nil
end

Cheers,
Daniel

maz · July 11, 2006, 8:46pm

Daniel S. wrote:

puts code + sep + e.to_s
result = eval(code)
puts code + sep + result.inspect
return result
rescue Exception => e
puts code + sep + e.to_s
# puts already returns nil
end

or perhaps even

def describe code
out = eval(code).inspect
rescue Exception => e
out = e.to_s; nil
ensure
puts code + " => " + out
end

Cheers,
Daniel

maz · July 12, 2006, 4:23am

Just Another Victim of the Ambient M. wrote:

Can anyone recommend a good IDE?

Check out xmp for vim for code evaluation and annotation:
http://eigenclass.org/hiki.rb?Enhanced+xmp+code+evaluation+and+annotation

And the breakpoint library (ask Google where it is).

Can anyone recommend a good... I don't know the proper term for this

but… a GUI toolkit?

If you’ve used TK with Perl, you can use your existing TK knowledge
with Ruby, too.

Cheers,
Dave

maz · July 13, 2006, 5:55am

On Jul 11, 2006, at 2:45 PM, Daniel S. wrote:

rescue Exception => e
return result
out = e.to_s; nil
ensure
puts code + " => " + out
end

Cheers,
Daniel

def describe code
require ‘xmp’
xmp code
end

I cheated though

maz · July 12, 2006, 5:26am

On Jul 11, 2006, at 9:20 PM, [email protected] wrote:

Just Another Victim of the Ambient M. wrote:
Can anyone recommend a good IDE?
Check out xmp for vim for code evaluation and annotation:
eigenclass.org
+annotation

For those of you that use TextMate, this is now bundled with the
editor as the Execute and Update ?# =>? Markers command in the Ruby
bundle menu.

James Edward G. II