CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2011/ch1 1a cs

CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2010/ch1 1a ms

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Introduction

What is Ruby?

Ruby is a programming language, much like PHP, Python, or Perl. However, users of Ruby believe that this programming language has a more sophisticated and powerful syntax than other programming languages. The Ruby language seems to combine the best of all the other languages. For instance, it has Python’s ease of usability, the simplicity which Perl is famous for, and also has the conceptual elegance that Smalltalk is popular for. The Ruby language first originated in the early 1990s but has become extremely popular with programmers all over the world only in the last few years.

How to interpret IDE?

Just imagine a picture, you take off shoes and running on the beach on a sunny day. The breeze touches our face and you are free to feel the sand using your feet. But in case that there is maybe a sharpened thing which is a threat to your feet. So we need a tradeoff from direct satisfaction to safety faced. You do not need to worry about whether your feet will be scratched to bleed or something when wearing shoes. So IDE is just like the shoes and command line is just like the bare feet. It is your choice to choose between the command line and the IDE, but it is essential to know that IDE is just a name of set of tools to make it more comfortable and more easy to implement some functionality. There are many shoes brand there are there for you to choose.

IDEs are designed to maximize programmer productivity by providing tightly-knit components with similar user interfaces. This should mean that the programmer has to do less mode switching versus using discrete development programs. However, because an IDE is a complicated piece of software by its very nature, this higher productivity only occurs after a lengthy learning process. Most IDEs have tools that allow you to:

• Write and edit source code
• See errors as you type
• See highlighted code syntax
• Automate repetitive tasks
• Compile code
• Browse class structures
• View JavaDocs
• Use drag-and-drop utilities for easy building of features, such as graphic objects or creating database connections

The mostly used IDE are: Aptana RadRails, Ruby Mine, Eclipse, and NetBeans. You may find more information : IDE.

IDEs for Ruby

Aptana RadRails

RadRails (Rapid Application Development IDE) is a free, open source IDE for Ruby and Rails applications. The RadRails IDE is built on the Eclipse RCP, and includes the RDT and Subclipse plug-in. The RadRails tools are also available as Eclipse +plug-ins. Aptana RadRails is a high-rated development tool that seeks to help users program in a more convenient free IDE. When developing a Rails project, there are more things to do than the source code itself. RadRails is now included as part of Aptana Studio 3. No extra download required--now integrated into a singleeditor. Here is the latest release version.

RDT Eclipse

The RDT Eclipse stands for Ruby Development Tools plug-in for Eclipse. To install ruby, please go to here for your platform of choice. Now that a specific version of Ruby have installed on your computer. Second, please install the eclipse, more information about what is Eclipse and how to install Eclipse may found above. Third, in order to make it work, RDT is required to install (see here). This is a plug-in for Eclipse that provides many features you've got used to. On how to download a new version and update your plug-in, this link maybe useful.

Netbeans Ruby Support

The NetBeans Ruby support plug-ins offer an integrated development environment for building, running, testing, and debugging Ruby and Ruby on Rails applications. On how to install latest NetbeansIDE, see Resource. About how to install the ruby support into the Netbeans IDE. You may find this useful. The main features the IDE offer are here. If one encounters problems when installing the plug-in in Netbeans, here is for latest upgrade or notification from their official website. A useful community supported by Netbeans is this

Textmate

Textmate is a powerful text editor for mac OS. It is beneficial that many people are working to develop bundles and plugins which can extend the functionality of the TextMate so that one can work with many kinds of languages such as Ruby. By using bundles, shortcuts, macros can be added to the TextMate to do further programming. What is more, TextMate is a lightweight development tool which means only a few rules needed to follow in order to do the development. More information about the lightweight tools can be found here.

Comparison

We classify each features realized by different IDEs as A, B, C and D. If a feature is ranked A among different IDEs, that means that if you are plan to use this feature, it is highly recommended that you should use this IDE.

	RDT Eclipse	Netbeans Ruby Support	RadRails	Ruby Mine
rich code completion	a	b	b	b

Conclusion

References

• [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_development_environment
• [2]http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/about/
• [3]http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-rubyeclipse/#N10062
• [4]http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/
• [5]http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-rubyeclipse/#N10062
• [6]http://netbeans.org/features/index.html
• [7]http://wiki.netbeans.org/RubyInstallation
• [8]http://netbeans.org/features/ruby/index.html
• [9]http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-eclipse-rdt/index.html
• [10]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_methodology