Talk:Ruby (programming language)

About the status paragraph

I don't want to call this section "criticism", or anything like that, but it seems important, given my experience with Ruby so far, to place a limit on the unbridled enthusiasm which so many website express for tools that are not quite (yet) ready for prime time. Many of the tools fulfill about 90% of what a developer might needs, but none seem to be 100% yet. A single set of tools that can install on any OS and provide support for Rails, GUI, and testing has not yet appeared. Granted, many tools can be forced to work on varioius platforms by near-heroic build efforts. When these tools become, for Ruby, what Netbeans or Eclipse is to Java, or Visual Studio is to C#, then Ruby can grow into the big time. So in case any Ruby lovers are tempted to completely remove that paragraph, which I deem in advance may upset some, please help me find a way to keep sanity about Ruby's current status, as well as hope for it's future. If you disagree, please bring evidence here (or to my talk page) first.Pat Palmer 11:28, 11 May 2008 (CDT)

Ruby is designed in such a way as to not require the existence of NetBeans, Eclipse or Visual Studio-style IDEs. The Principle of Least Surprise is such that you don't need large IDEs to write Ruby. With a language like Java, one gets so wrapped up in OO implementation clutter (interfaces, abstraction, factories and so on) that you need an IDE to mask that complexity. In Ruby, this is not as important, in my humble opinion. Most Ruby users prefer TextMate, vi/Vim or Emacs over Eclipse, NetBeans or IntelliJ. This is a feature, not a bug. If your language is so complex you must use a large IDE, you lose flexibility. You become tied to that IDE, to whatever platforms run that IDE and so on. (The same is true for Python, Perl, PHP, C and many other languages.) –Tom Morris 11:19, 8 August 2009 (UTC)