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.'

Views: 649

Replies to This Discussion

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.

RSS

Happy 10th year, JCertif!

Notes

Welcome to Codetown!

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.

When you create a profile for yourself you get a personal page automatically. That's where you can be creative and do your own thing. People who want to get to know you will click on your name or picture and…
Continue

Created by Michael Levin Dec 18, 2008 at 6:56pm. Last updated by Michael Levin May 4, 2018.

Looking for Jobs or Staff?

Check out the Codetown Jobs group.

 

Enjoy the site? Support Codetown with your donation.



InfoQ Reading List

Presentation: Local First – How To Build Software Which Still Works After the Acquihire

Alex Good discusses the fragility of modern cloud-dependent apps and shares a roadmap for "local-first" software. By leveraging a Git-like DAG structure and Automerge, he explains how to move from brittle client-server models to resilient systems where data lives on-device. He explores technical implementation, rich-text merging, and how this infrastructure simplifies engineering workflows.

By Alex Good

Article: Stateful Continuation for AI Agents: Why Transport Layers Now Matter

Agent workflows make transport a first-order concern. Multi-turn, tool-heavy loops amplify overhead that is negligible in single-turn LLM use. Stateful continuation cuts overhead dramatically. Caching context server-side can reduce client-sent data by 80%+ and improve execution time by 15–29% .

By Anirudh Mendiratta

Presentation: State of Play: AI Coding Assistants

Birgitta Böckeler discusses the rapid evolution of AI agents, moving beyond "vibe coding" to sophisticated context engineering. She explains how architectural constraints and "harness engineering" create the safety nets required for autonomous code generation. She shares vital insights for leaders on balancing speed with maintainability, security risks, and the cost of AI autonomy.

By Birgitta Böckeler

Inside Spotify’s 2025 Wrapped Archive: AI Narratives at Scale and the Privacy Trade‑Off

Spotify's engineering team developed the 2025 "Wrapped Archive," generating 1.4 billion personalized reports for 350 million users. This system identifies key listening days and crafts narratives using a language model. As companies increasingly provide narrative recaps, concerns about user privacy and data tracking persist, necessitating a balance between insights and privacy safeguards.

By Matt Foster

Presentation: When Every Bit Counts: How Valkey Rebuilt Its Hashtable for Modern Hardware

Madelyn Olson discusses the evolution of Valkey's data structures, moving away from "textbook" pointer-chasing HashMaps to more cache-aware designs. She explains the implementation of "Swedish" tables to maximize memory density. She shares insights on systems intuition, memory prefetching, and the rigorous testing needed for mission-critical caches.

By Madelyn Olson

© 2026   Created by Michael Levin.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service