On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 10:24 AM, Martin DeMello <[email protected]> wrote: > I've been thinking about the minimal feature set a beginner-friendly > ruby development/learning environment should have. I feel the > following are essential: > > 1. An editor pane > > 2. A drracket-style repl, that can reset itself and reload all the > definitions from the editor pane > > 3. The ability to run the program from within the IDE > > 4. Built-in docs (possibly via launching a browser window, though I > note that drracket took a definite hit in how friendly it felt when it > went that route) > > * How close can we come to this with the current tools out there?
There's also a "lightweight" variant: 1. any text editor with syntax highlighting and code indention for Ruby (gvim?) - maybe there's also a standalone code formatter. 2. IRB, pry 3. Terminal 4. ri I do not know how good this works on Windows since I only use self compiled Ruby on cygwin. > * Would this be a useful thing to have? > > I think so - at the very least on windows, opening up a terminal > window to run stuff is not a natural thing to do, and I'm sure there > are lots of linux and mac users who would prefer a nice integrated > environment within which to learn ruby. Right, it might reduce the learning curve. But wouldn't it then also need features to easily built graphical user interfaces? > * Should it be written in ruby? It could as well be written in HTML - meaning: proper documentation. The benefit would be that people get along on more different systems (i.e. without the overhead of installing an IDE and even without a graphical UI at all). It might be a bit more rough than a single installer which throws everything (Ruby, IDE...) on the system. But then again, if it's software, maintenance efforts are higher. Kind regards robert -- remember.guy do |as, often| as.you_can - without end http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ruby-talk-google group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/ruby-talk-google?hl=en
