Codetown ::: a software developer's community
Just started with Ruby on Rails ( Rails 3) and I'm trying to figure out the best I.D.E. Here's what I've found so far:
Eclipse / DLTK - while researching this on the web I came across a number of broken links which was a bad sign and when I did get it installed I wasn't able to debug using it. Ater some more web searches I came across a few posts that said basically the Ruby plug-in had run out of steam and was not being pursued.
JetBrains/RubyMine - this installed and works, so far the *looks* like the best bet. The instant database diagramming looks really cool, do other I.D.E.s support this?
Ecliplse/Aptana - just got this installed, Will try debugging with it soon.
Does anyone have recommendations for their favorite I.D.E.? I don't need anythgin too fancy, as long as I can set a breakpoint and view variables and the call stack I'm happy. And it helps if its a free product.'
Tags:
Kevin, What have you found out so far with Eclipse/Aptana and JetBrains/RubyMine? Have you experimented with any other IDE's?
With Eclipse/Aptana I *think* I got installed, but the online references that showed how to start a debugging session accessed menu options that were not present so I was unable to use it. So far RubyMine looks the best, it also checks the syntax of of .html.erb ( Embedded RuBy ) files and generates a diagram of your DB tables, highlighting any relationships that look hinky. Worth noting RubyMine costs money, while the others I've looked at are open source and frankly I think the developers for the free plugins ran out of steam. The profit motive at work.
Codetown is a social network. It's got blogs, forums, groups, personal pages and more! You might think of Codetown as a funky camper van with lots of compartments for your stuff and a great multimedia system, too! Best of all, Codetown has room for all of your friends.
Created by Michael Levin Dec 18, 2008 at 6:56pm. Last updated by Michael Levin May 4, 2018.
Check out the Codetown Jobs group.

DoorDash has launched a multimodal machine learning system that aligns product images, text, and user queries in a shared embedding space. Trained on 32 million labeled query-product pairs using contrastive learning, the system improves semantic search, product ranking, and advertising relevance. Embeddings also support other machine learning tasks across the marketplace.
By Leela Kumili
Stefan Dirnstorfer discusses the shift from DOM-based testing to visual UI agents. He explains why LLMs often fail at precision tasks - like spotting one-pixel shifts or broken road networks - and shares how advanced image registration and "Chain-of-Thought" vision processing are essential for reliable QA. Learn why combining generative AI with classical algorithms is the future of automation.
By Stefan Dirnstorfer
Celebrating its 23rd year, Devnexus 2026 was held from March 4-6, 2026 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia. The event featured speakers from the Java community who delivered workshops and talks under tracks such as: AI Generative; AI in Practice; Core Java; Java Frameworks; and Security and Developer Tools.
By Michael RedlichAndres Almiray, a serial open-source contributor and the creator of JReleaser, discusses the project's state, noting that the tool is usable across any ecosystem, not just Java. He also touches on the Common House Foundation's mission.
By Andres Almiray
This article introduces practical methods for evaluating AI agents operating in real-world environments. It explains how to combine benchmarks, automated evaluation pipelines, and human review to measure reliability, task success, and multi-step agent behavior. The article also discusses the challenges of evaluating systems that plan, use tools, and operate across multiple interaction turns.
By Amit Kumar Padhy
© 2026 Created by Michael Levin.
Powered by