I’m sure you don’t believe it, doesn’t seem like NetBeans is going to take the Ruby developer world by storm, but Sun seems to be pouring money into Ruby support. I’m skeptical that the Ruby community is going to embrace Netbeans, but in this entry, I present some hints that NetBeans may be well on its way to becoming the Ruby IDE of choice. The idea that an IDE traditionally associated with Java development is going to take the Ruby world by storm might seem insane at first glance, but read on…
Sun is focused on developer market share…
…nothing else. Pouring money into Ruby support and acquiring MySQL for a cool billion play into this perfectly. While everyone has been moaning about the Death of Java for years, it remains the biggest draw on Safari, and the biggest book market. Ruby has the fastest growing community. My conspiracy theory is that the MySQL acquisition coupled with the HUGE Netbeans focus means that Sun is after you. Sun sees Ruby as having the energy, they want to channel your mojo. (JavaOne should really be renamed at this point, I predict they are going to talk about Ruby almost as much as Java this year.)
Which brings me to NetBeans…
Kovacs Pitches a Curveball
Sun relentlessly pushes NetBeans at every conference, to the point where every time I’m in a Sun presentation I expect someone to relate it back to The Great IDE: NetBeans. Almost every time I talk to some Sun PR operative they are talking to me about NetBeans. I’ve met some people that use NetBeans, but most tend to use either Eclipse or IntelliJ. Michael Kovacs writes about his past and present view of NetBeans over on his blog in “So long TextMate?… Hello NetBeans? Really? Yeah, really.”
Michael Kovacs: I’ll admit it, I’m one of many folks that used to treat NetBeans as a whipping boy. Questioning why Sun would bother dumping money into the horse that so obviously lost the race to Eclipse and IntelliJ to win the hearts and minds of Java developers around the world.
Michael Kovacs: I grabbed a nightly build of 6.1 and installed it. Right away I noticed that they made a special build for ruby where they’ve stripped it down to where it is focused on supporting ruby and rails apps. They added a theme that looks similar to textmate to make me feel more at home. Many keybindings are similar to Textmate (though not all but they are easily configurable). You can easily debug your rails apps with the graphical debugger. The generators work. Code completion works okay at times. API docs are easily visible inline during code completion. Navigating around the project is now easy where before that was the single biggest outage that kept me from even considering it. You can easily jump to type definitions. Simple refactoring is supported…..
Right, last time I installed Netbeans was just after last year’s JavaOne, and I came away with the idea that it was weighty, not very agile. I forget how big the download was, but it was more than Eclipse. I’m convinced there are some great things about the tool, and that it has come a long way, but I’m still somewhat incredulous. Although, Kovacs is no Sun fanboy, so his post got my attention.
So, let’s just assume that Kovacs is right and NetBeans is a real contender now… enter MySQL..
James Hints at NetBeans 6.5: MySQL Integration
You’ll probably warm up to NetBeans 6.5 once it becomes MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Analyzer. James from Sun Discusses MySQL Support in NetBeans 6.5 and you can see list of planned database features for NetBeans 6.5. Maybe we’ll see the existing MySQL tools integrated in situ… from the wiki:
…MySQL WorkBench will solve this if we can integrate with it in some way…
Now that might give me a real reason to start using the tool. If Sun really wanted to be draconian about it they would absorb MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser into NetBeans and make NetBeans the only way to run the tools. Now, if NetBeans became the supported way to manage MySQL, many Rails programmers would find themselves with an installation of NetBeans (with integrated MySQL Administrator, Query Browser, and Workbench). Then they can start attracting you to NetBeans Ruby support….. then after that they start to convince you to start deploying applications using JRuby…. then they dangle something like Glassfish integration in front of you and XA transactions (because everyone ends up needing them).
I’m still skeptical, but I’m going to RubyOne….. err… JavaOne with open eyes. If Kovacs is right, then NetBeans might just turn into the logical choice.
Netbeans Rails Support
If you are interested in seeing what Netbeans has to offer wrt Rails, take a look at Tor Norbye’s blog.
(Time to stop) Stubbornly Clinging to Emacs
I still use Emacs for Ruby programming, everytime I’ve tried to get into something like Aptana, I’ve been frustrated by this or that. Eclipse can become a bloated hog very quickly, and Aptana’s array of confusingly named products doesn’t help. I often wish that I could go back in time and dissuade the Aptana guys from contacting the RadRails project, Aptana tries to do too much IMO - All I want is a Ruby IDE, and I get some sort of crazy “Ajax server” called Jaxer.
Although I use Eclipse with success in other languages, I’ve never seen the need for an IDE in Ruby. I said the same thing about Java up until 2002 when it became abundantly clear that the language complexity was forcing me to adopt an IDE. That hasn’t happened to me yet with Ruby. Even with greater MySQL integration, I’m still not convinced I would make the jump to an IDE for Rails. It is likely time to revisit Netbeans.
Netbeans' Ruby and Ruby on Rails support definitely looks very promising. I have started using it for some Ruby projects and am very impressed with the quality of auto completion for Ruby (including things like Ruby expressions inside strings inside Ruby code inside RHTML pages), debugger support, and other Ruby integration features. It definitely seems to be a bit ahead of Eclipse / Aptana right now. For simple stuff, I still resort to Textmate (at least on OSX).
Perhaps if they make it so you can extend it in jRuby it will be a contender. Maybe they already have; I speak from ignorance.
But I do know that spending a lot of time in an environment that can't be extended in a language you know and enjoy writing in is ultimately a huge frustration unless you are OK with settling for the functionality the authors think you are going to want. But good developers are always experimenting, and this demands a tool that is as flexible as their own imaginations.
I have tried many IDEs, eclipse, aptana, vim, but for Ruby and Rails Netbeans is the best for me.
"I’m skeptical that the Ruby community is going to embrace Netbeans"
Yeah, maybe you be surprised, but actually I endorse such projects.
The reason is that we used vim and emacs for too long, both are a problem.
I am happy that GUI editors in general become more attention, i dont want to use either vim or emacs to write my ruby code.
@markus, I don't disagree, I've been using emacs since the mid-1990s. I use Eclipse for Java, but only because the Emacs equivalent (JDE) doesn't come close to the usability of Eclipse Java. Searching for a type or a resource, being able to quickly navigate. I don't see myself abandoning emacs, but based on some of the feedback from this post, maybe it is time to start taking Netbeans more seriously.
I'm wondering why Codegear/Borland's Eclipse based 3rdRail Rails-IDE doesn't get more attention. IMHO it's much more mature than Aptana...
I have been using NetBeans ruby IDE for a couple months now and it is the best IDE I have tried yet.
I use NetBeans 6 on Windows.
I suppose I could use a text pad or something slim like Notepad2, but NB6 is really, really convenient. It's quite useful.
As for 3rdRail, well... it's not free. Right now it costs exactly $0 to get started with Rails development and some people will probably base their tool selection around that.
I love me my NetBeans. Add vi editor plugin and git support (coming in 6.1) and it's the closest thing to a perfect integrated environment I've found for Ruby development work. Great job to everyone involved.
Don't get me wrong, I understand the allure of Textmate. And for simple hacking I'm perfectly comfortable in vim. But for large projects that need proper code introspection and quick documentation access, it's tough to beat Netbeans at this point.
Sorry, meant to say that git support exists as a plugin, but that plugin is only supported in NetBeans 6.1+. That is all. :)
Netbeans 6.0 (the "Ruby" edition) is the editor of choice for maybe a third of our team of 12. The other third (still) uses Aptana and the other third vim. One lonely Emacs guy and one or two Textmate chaps.
I'm with the Netbeans group :) (was using Eclipse w/ the RadRails plugin before) and I'm really looking forward for Netbeans 6.1 and its support for Rails 2.1
@Alex Muntean, interesting. I'm surprised at the positive feedback for NetBeans. glad to hear that you work in an environment which allows developers some choice about development tools. In the last few "real jobs" I had, the development teams always forced people to use a standard set of tools; I could understand this from a management and support perspective, but I always thought that it, in some way, limited the progression of the team. Freedom to choose development environment + the fact that most have standardized on Netbeans is more fuel for the idea that Netbeans really has released a compelling Ruby environment. (I'm surprised.)
Opportune day!
I faith that chose the decent leg of it for asking your make doubts, if not, sorry.
I do not undoubtably many times go to the forums. And my, my assuredly is what is:
How do you imagine how sober the conundrum of toll increases, and whether it is practical far-reaching shock,
the deed data that already taking place, namely: Rising stuffs charges has transformed subsistence into an global partisan issue.
Riots prepare erupted in Egypt, Haiti and Bangladesh in excess of soaring stuffs charges.
People fought one another remaining bags of rice in West Africa.
The causes and the solutions to the grub critical time are complex.
Iif not knotty and you make your theory on this, cheer response, I am least interested to catch your theory.
See you later!
P.S. Sorry for my english.
@wbondarmunw: i totally agree.
thanks, tim, for the post. i played around w/ nb just after javaone last year too, and came to the same conclusions. i'm going to try 6.1 now to see what's up.
btw, does anyone know whether there's 1.9 support?