Ruby is a dynamic, reflective, object-oriented, general-purpose programming language. It supports multiple programming paradigms, including functional, object-oriented, and imperative. It also has a dynamic type system and automatic memory management.
There is a bit difference between editors and IDEs, where an editor is a tool adding, editing, and viewing the contents of a file. On other hand, an IDE or integrated development environment, is a collection of tools roughly focused on a common task, such as Ruby development, and all include some form of an editor.
In this article I have gathered a list of 7 Best Ruby on Rails IDEs for developers that would help you to accomplish your development tasks. If you are aware of some other Ruby on Rails IDEs, please let us know by posting comment in comment section. Enjoy !!
1. Aptana Studio
Aptana Studio 3 is an open source development tool for the developers; it enables developer to test their web applications using single environment. Aptana supports latest browser technologies specs such as HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Ruby, Rails, PHP and Python. It includes number of features such as GIF integration, HTML,CSS and JavaScript Code assists, integrated debugger, deployment wizard and IDE Customization. It supports for one-shot as well as keep-synchronized setups. Multiple protocols including FTP, SFTP, FTPS and Capistrano. Ability to automatically publish your Ruby & Rails applications to hosting services such as Heroku and Engine Yard.
2. Net Beans
It consists of an open-source IDE and an application platform that enable developers to rapidly create web, enterprise, desktop, and mobile applications. They discontinued the Ruby IDE support back in 2011, due to Oracle introducing a new Java Dev Kit, but they brought it back. Java is the main platform and it also supports JavaFX, PHP, JavaScriptx, Ruby +Ruby on Rails, Groovy and Grails and C/C++.
3. RubyMine
JetBrains RubyMine IDE provides a comprehensive Ruby code editor aware of dynamic language specifics and delivers smart coding assistance, intelligent code refactoring and code analysis capabilities. Easy project configuration, automatic Ruby Gems management, Rake support — it’s got everything a Ruby developer needs in a development environment.
RubyMine brings dedicated RoR project structure views, quick Model-View-Controller navigation options, Rails specific code completion, intention actions, and refactorings. All this, plus best-of-breed HTML, CSS and JavaScript editing support and advanced web development tools, is the recipe for producing cutting-edge Web applications.
4. Komodo
Komodo is the professional IDE for major web languages, including Python, PHP, Ruby, Perl, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Komodo IDE’s complete set of tools provide hassle free development environment for developers.
5. Redcar
Redcar is quite good IDE written in Ruby and runs on JRuby, Redcar supports Textmate themes and snippets, Redcar is licensed under the GPL and the source is available on Github.
6. Arcadia
Arcadia is a Light Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Ruby written in Ruby using the classic tcl/tk GUI toolkit. Arcadia provides Script editing, running and debugging support, Source browsing, syntax highlighting, code completion, Cross platform, on any system where Ruby and tcl-tk are installed and many more.
7. Ice Coder
ICEcoder is an open source and web-based IDE that is built with PHP and works fast. It works by simply dropping its app folder to anywhere we prefer and any files there (and inside subfolders) are ready to be edited. ICEcoder has a powerful JavaScript API for easily interacting with it and it works with many popular languages (PHP, JS, CSS, LESS, Ruby, etc.).
