I have just begun to start Ruby on Rails (Earlier, I was a PLSQL and Bash developer). I have never felt the need to use an IDE (apart from the time when I used to code in Advanced Java) and since I'm new to Ruby on Rails, I would like to know if I should use some IDE such as RubyMine or basic editor such as Sublime?
1 Answer
When first using Ruby on Rails, it is probably best to use a basic editor to begin with. There are a lot of different things you will need to quickly learn, and having an IDE hide them away won't exactly help.
After you've got a little experience with Rails, you could move to using an IDE. While this may not be a particularly useful answer, the best I can say is that it comes down to personnel preference. The best answer I can give is some of the pros and cons of an IDE:
Pros
- Many of the tasks you'll have to use often will be available in dropdown menus, such as the
rails generate
commands. - The good code completion from an IDE such as RubyMine or NetBeans can save many short trips to the documentation.
Cons
- An IDE can require significantly more resources to run.
- (Specific to RubyMine) IML files are somewhat specific to your computer, and can be a significant problem when trying to work with multiple people on the same project.
- It can obscure a significant portion of what is going on 'behind the scenes', making it harder to solve configuration issues. Personally, I have spent large amounts of time making RubyMine run what was working with bin/rails