15 Feb
Ruby on Rails Coding Setup
Now that I’ve gotten over the initial hump of learning enough Ruby (on Rails) to get some productive work done, here’s my list of quite-possibly-essential tools for the job:
- Ruby (and Rails, if you’re doing web stuff)
- Ruby Interactive Reference - Currently v1.8 (ri1.8 package in Debian)
- A good text editor. I prefer Emacs for heavy coding, vim for quick edits. Whatever works best for you.
- The Ruby Documentation Bundle from ruby-doc.org.
- The Rails Framework Documentation (if you’re using rails). On a Debian system, this is part of the rails package. Look under /usr/share/doc/rails/html.
- A fast, tabbed browser. Firefox/Iceweasel are just too slow for me, so I prefer Galeon. It’s not actively maintained anymore, but I currently have 68 tabs open in two windows, and the response time is instantaneous, so I’m happy.
- This one may or may not apply to your situation, but for me it’s essential: a good music player and good music to go with it. Currently this is Audacious playing Gipsy Kings. YMMV.
I also use a few non-essential extras to make my life a bit simpler.
- Beryl is excellent for multiple desktops and transparent windows. Multiple desktops are easy enough, but transparent windows can really be handy when you’re trying to read things in one window while typing in another.
- A good MySQL front-end. I personally rather like the MySQL Query Browser. It’s light, easy to use, and does all of its work through queries that I can edit, so I don’t have to keep a separate shell window open for manual tasks.
- A tabbed terminal for multiple connections to the remote machine I’m working on. I just use gnome-terminal for this though there probably are better alternatives out there.
- Oh, and most importantly, a Debian system to run all of this stuff on.
Get a setup like that going and you too, can be Cool Like Me ™. Well, ok, not really. Nobody can really be as cool as me. Or maybe they just don’t want to… hmm…
