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scarred, but not defeated by vim, i decided to try a recently released beta of rubymine 1.5, and it’s been great so far.

massive disclaimer: i have not tried anything else for ruby/rails coding except for vim.

unlike a similar offering from netbeans, rubymine is a standalone install that seems to reuse a lot of the existing intellij idea codebase.

it was great experience out of the box – i pointed it at the local svn working copy and it verified all the installed gems (even though i am fortunate enough to run on cygwin, it recognized them all).

it has great rake support, and all rake tasks run without any modifications. however, for script/server in cygwin evironment i had to replace -e"STDOUT.sync=true;STDERR.sync=true;load($0=ARGV.shift);" with -e"STDOUT.sync=true;STDERR.sync=true;RAILS_ROOT='/cygdrive/c/project/root/dir';load($0=ARGV.shift);" in ruby arguments field. once the server runs, it also displays its log with proper color-coding.

i still run script/console from cygwin command line, since rubymine does not do readline support (i use ctrl+L, ctrl+R, tab completion, ctrl+e/ctrl+a and other goodness quite a lot in my irb).

things to love

• color-coding, auto-indenting (including color-coding of matching brace/bracket/do-end block)
• ctrl+shift+n/ctrl+n for finding files and getting around; with alt+f1 to show current file in different contexts/views
• ctrl+f12 for current file structure
• visible spaces (otherwise the ruby coding standards make the code look too squeezed to me)
• ctrl+click when mousing over (jump to all kinds of things, including template names, css style names – all of it very nicely integrated)
• ctrl+/ for toggling comments

• rails project structure
• parsing my stacktraces and linking them to the source code
• autocompletion, although i do not find myself using it too much

• all the usual things that idea has – svn and git support out of the box (and shelving works, just like in idea, in case you have to work with svn)
• pretty sweet diff (ctrl+d) that rivals tortoisesvn visual diff
• ctrl+shift+up/down to move the current line
• ctrl+d to clone selection
• shift+delete to delete the whole line

• ctrl+shift+f12 to go full-screen
• alt+number to toggle between tool windows
• file structure tool window (alt+7)
• alt+f7 to find usages

• alt+shift+f10 to bring up run menu
• shift+f10 to run current run

• simple refactorings (introduce method, rename variable/method, etc).

• it is pretty damn stable, and occasional errors do not kill the IDE.

things to improve

• unlike netbeans, it is not a full-blown ide with ruby support, so some things that exist in idea are missing (notably, database support, some of the team communication and code sharing features, and other bells and whistles)

• ctrl-q for docs is a bit wonky (frankly, i’d rather jump to matching place in the online api docs – it gives me context)
• code folding fscks stuff up sometimes
• still do not know how to jump to matching brace/do-end block
• svn switch could not be found
• ctrl+shift+f10 to run current test (and any other ad-hoc run tasks) does not work on cygwin, unless you do RAILS_ROOT trick above

i have not tried all the other stuff, like haml support, cucumber support, rspec, and rspec w/ drb.

overall feel is nice and polished – most things just work out of the box (unlike the frankenstein monster that eclipse can be sometimes – truly a Windows of IDEs).

i do believe in using “idiomatic” shortcuts with an IDE, thus i did not try any of the “compatibility” keyboard modes.

for now, i do not see myself coming back to vi for rails development – for a hundred bucks, rubymine is a great development tool.

i recently had to do a small rails project. so i did what i usually do in these cases – fired up the easiest IDE that runs anywhere – vim.

now let me reminisce a bit – i’ve been using vi on and off ever since i got my hands on linux in 1997, and i have not learned much beyond the basics over the years. it works the same way on half a dozen unixes i’ve used it on, as well as on cygwin and macs; even dreaded beasts like mks toolkit provide it. it is an indispensable cross-platform tool.

it does not require much horsepower, and it fits well with the back-to-command-line ideology of rails.

if all you are using it for is editing occasional file or two, it does everything you need out of the box. throw in basic syntax highlighting, auto-indenting, split windows, buffers – and you have enough to survive.

oh, did i mention the macho factor? it takes some effort to tame the menu-less monster of an interface with a barrage of keystrokes that appear as magic incantation to others.

vi has a peculiar physical effect – i often surprise myself when i remember certain editing commands, but at the same time i am utterly unable to remember them when standing behind someone, advising them what to type – my fingers twitch, but my higher brain functions are not firing.

curiously, this reminds me too much of some of the mainframe folks i’ve seen, or even an occasional SAP jockey. consider it a compliment – there is a lot of power in short mnemonic commands compared to drill-down menus. yes, every powerful system must have a command line, but it must degrade gracefully. with vi the discoverability of interface is pretty much non-existent, and the learning curve is steep.

my current theory is that the muscle memory vi creates leads to a particular form of addiction which explains its appeal (and perhaps the religious zeal).

when i work in a context of a project, where i constantly need to bounce around different files, vim UI starts to break down: built-in buffers support is inadequate. the editor needs to have a concept of a project i am currently working on, and, ideally, the framework i use.

i know that the usual answer is customize, customize, customize – and in this respect it follows very much a linux tradition – if you are 15yrs old, and have tons of time, and only one machine, you can spend days crafting that perfect setup that is just right. having done that a number of times, i have learned that it is just not worth my time – I switch computers often, work on client sites, bounce between different teams, so i want stuff that is reasonably workable out of the box.

i can take it easy and install some basic plugins – fuzzy finder to give me files i want fast, nerd tree for filesystem navigation, rails for rails integration, tComment for toggling comments on blocks of text.

but now i need to manage them across several machines, and perhaps i do not want to spoil my vi muscle memory that can cripple my vi-fu on that hp-ux 11.11 when i come across it (yeah right).

so perhaps i will draw the line and use some other ide for project work, leaving vi for simpler stuff.

to add some substance to this post, a few significant lines from my .vimrc:

syntax enable
filetype on
filetype plugin on

set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set expandtab

autocmd FileType ruby set shiftwidth=2|set tabstop=2|set expandtab

set number
set ai
set si

and some of the commands i use often (besides the usual navigation/editing/searching ones that are in my muscles, but refuse to be articulated):

• :e! to reload the file i am currently editing
• :retab i really hate those tabs

• :ls to look at open buffers (the listing is a pain to read, trying to remember what those little symbols mean and matching numbers to file names)
• :e filename to open a file in a new buffer
• :bd to close the current buffer
• :e# to bounce between two last buffers (how can i cycle between all the buffers ala alt+tab?)

• ctrl+w followed by s or p to start splitting windows, then bounce around them with double ctrl+w or ctrl+w and arrows
• ctrl+w followed by <number>+ or <number>- to shrink or grow the split windows
• ctrl+w followed by q to close current window

• zz to center screen on current line, accompanied by zt op and zb ottom
• % to jump to matching brace

• o and O to insert the line and switch to editing mode
• I to insert at the beginning of the line (that i always forget, unlike its companion A)

• m + letter to place a named mark, ' + letter to jump to the beginning of the line, ` + letter to exact position of the mark

• >> and << are much easier for indenting, as opposed to my muscle-memorized number + > + enter

• shift+v or v to do visual selection
• once you visually selected stuff, you fold it with zf

finally, i find the whole :tabnew business utterly useless and insulting.

what i do miss in addition to project structure navigation, is easily looking up/jumping between methods, code block folding that follows language semantics, and decent tabs.

jamis buck blog entries on the subject were really informative and inspiring (especially the comments).