21 March 2009

Ruby on Rails IDE for beginners

I have been a Java programmer for a long time and a big fan of eclipse. Lately I have been very interested to try out Ruby on Rails and Python with Django. I am not the guy who wants to program using text editors. I found that we have these following choices. I have listed here some IDEs and simple test editors which can turn into powerful programming environments for you as a new RoR explorer.

Programming environments listed in Alphabetical order
Note: If you are already using a tool for Ruby on Rails development, please leave a comment and let us know about it.

Eclipse based RadRails - If you are coming from Java shop and are already heavily into eclipse as your IDE, then you might want to check this out. It installs on Linux, Mac OSX and Windows. Because eclipse is java based, you will need jvm installed before you install RadRails with eclipse. RadRails can also be installed with Aptana Studio, an IDE bundle by RadRails creators.

JEdit - JEdit is a powerful programming tool for those who are good with using just a text editor for their coding requirements. Here are couple of good guidlines from Eric and Eadz for working with JEdit for RoR.

Komodo - This is an excellent IDE from ActiveState developers for scripting languages. You can program in Python, Perl, PHP, Ruby, and even HTML, CSS and javascript using Komodo. If you are also programming in other mentioned languages, then this IDE would be worth a look.

NetBeans- This is a java based IDE which has a good support for RoR. Comes bundled with Glassfish V3 Prelude. They provide RoR learning trails that can help you if you are a beginner.

TextMate - For all Mac enthusiasts, this is the editor of choice for RoR. This is pretty powerful and highly customizable. You defenitely want to check this out if you are on a Mac. If you use windows, there is a similar editor called eTextEditor, which is equally powerful.

20 March 2009

Ruby, JRuby, Rails, Python, Django, J2EE

As an experienced Java/J2EE developer for more than 4 years, and after successfully leading Java projects, we are missing something. It takes too much time to even just set up a rough draft of what we want. Even to provide a small demo for the client, we had to set up the whole mixture of frameworks, make sure the jar files don't conflict with new versions, and tedious manipulations trying to figure out how each framework will talk to each other... and so on. What a pain. Programming should be better than this. Web programming has so much capabilities and yet getting simple things in and out shouldn't be such a trouble. Python with Django and Ruby with Rails are beginning to solve most of these problems.

There are talks for Sun being acquired by IBM. Bad news for Java. I don't see much innovation happening due to Java Community Process. The web and open source shall remain the first and last place for free spirited innovation. If you are someone like me who wants to explore and find solutions where Java is failing, then you should definitely give Python or Ruby a try. There is no harm in learning a new language. Infact it will flex your cranium further, and you will be a better programmer, whether you program in Python, Ruby or Java.