Development Environments

Considering various idiosyncratic customizations, there are probably as many development environments as there are Rails programmers, but there are at least two broad types: text editor/command line environments, and integrated development environments (IDEs). Let’s consider the latter first.

IDEs

There is no shortage of Rails IDEs, including RadRails, RubyMine, and 3rd Rail. I’ve heard especially good things about RubyMine, and one reader (David Loeffler)has assembled notes on how to use RubyMine with this tutorial.7 If you’re comfortable using an IDE, I suggest taking a look at the options mentioned to see what fits with the
way you work.

Text Editors and Command Lines

Instead of using an IDE, I prefer to use a text editor to edit text, and a command line to issue commands (Figure 1.1). Which combination you use depends on your tastes and
your platform.

• Text editor: I recommend Sublime Text 2, an outstanding cross-platform text editor that is in beta as of this writing but has already proven to be exceptionally powerful. Sublime Text is heavily influenced by TextMate, and in fact is compatible with mostTextMate customizations,such assnippets and colorschemes.(TextMate, which is available only on OS X, is still a good choice if you use a Mac.) A second excellent choice is Vim,8 versions of which are available for all major platforms. Sublime Text is a commercial product, whereas Vim is free and open-source; both are industrial-strength editors, but Sublime Text is much more accessible to beginners.