Sunday, May 13, 2007

FAQ: What text editor should I use?

Any text editor -- even Windows Notepad -- will do, so long as you can save your documents as straight text. You'll eventually want something a bit more robust than Notepad, such as the SciTE code editor that is installed by the One-Click Ruby Installer. More fully-featured code editors include the e Text Editor and ActiveState's Komodo Editor. Google for further details and recommendations.

For more answers to Frequently-Asked Questions, check out posts with the faq tag.
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13 comments:

  1. AnonymousMay 13, 2007 at 10:15 PM

    I like ActiveState's Komodo Editor. G. I never tried it before.

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownMay 14, 2007 at 5:16 AM

    I think you should mention RadRails a.k.a. Aptana as it is also a very common Rails development IDE on Windows (and others as well as it is Eclipse-based and thus multi-platform).

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousMay 14, 2007 at 7:26 AM

    If you are using Visual Studio, might I suggest our IDE, Ruby In Steel - http://www.sapphiresteel.com

    best wishes
    Huw

    ReplyDelete
  4. David MulletMay 14, 2007 at 8:07 AM

    Thanks for your comments!

    I'll be addressing IDEs in a FAQ post separate from text editors. I already plan to mention Aptana/RadRails, Ruby in Steel, and Komodo IDE.

    --David

    ReplyDelete
  5. Charles RoperMay 15, 2007 at 7:07 AM

    E-TextEditor is a fantastic, but still in (rapid) development, text editor. It is essentially TextMate for Windows. Well worth checking out. It definitely my text (and Ruby) editor of choice.

    ReplyDelete
  6. gtcazMay 15, 2007 at 3:13 PM

    +1 to what Charles said! And now e has native windows support so you can write commands targeting either the One Click Installer Ruby or Cygwin's ruby (for all the cool Unix tools that provides).

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousMay 25, 2007 at 6:53 AM

    I prefer (g)Vim from http://www.vim.org
    You can get all what you want from it if you are willing to learn.

    Here's a nice overview what you need for rails: http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/HowtoUseVimWithRails

    And there is a plug in to emulate Textmate snippets too, http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1318

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousAugust 13, 2007 at 4:50 PM

    ED for Windows http://www.getsoft.com has very good Ruby support.

    See "Write Ruby code faster with ED for Windows" at http://blog.surfulater.com/2007/02/21/write-ruby-code-faster-with-ed-for-windows/

    ReplyDelete
  9. Duncan BayneJuly 30, 2008 at 11:28 PM

    I suggest using Emacs. Why have a different programming environment just because you're using a different language, or a different operating system?

    ReplyDelete
  10. DonSeptember 3, 2010 at 7:29 AM

    I've install Ruby192 on Windows 7, but did not get the option for SciTE code editor that is install by the One-Click Ruby Installer, meaning (I did not see the box to check and install SciTE, and the Ruby package manager RubyGems. When I go to |Start |Programs |Ruby192, I see Interactive Ruby & Start command prompt with Ruby, Documentation but no SciTE, also I do NOT get fxri Ruby interactive help & console...What am i missing? Most of the Ruby installation documentation mentions that SciTE and fxri as part of the installation.

    ReplyDelete
  11. David MulletSeptember 3, 2010 at 7:42 AM

    @Don:

    The current RubyInstaller package does not include SciTE.

    You can install SciTE from here

    David

    ReplyDelete
  12. Martin GrahamSeptember 21, 2010 at 9:37 AM

    I use NetBeans and absolutely love it.

    ReplyDelete
  13. David MulletSeptember 22, 2010 at 7:57 AM

    I've been using NetBeans IDE for two or three years now---for larger projects. For smaller projects, I currently use Notepad++ editor.

    ReplyDelete