Mondrian Ruby IDE

There is another Ruby IDE out there. This one is called Mondrian Ruby IDE.

Mondrian is built on top of the SciTE framework, which is designed to support programming-language aware text editors. The Ruby code uses the FOX GUI toolkit.

Mondrian's Ruby-specific editing logic is written in Ruby itself.

The authors admit this does cause it to run slowly when loading a large Ruby programming. But they point out that the process of editing a Ruby program is pretty lag-free, after that initial delay for loading.

They also call attention to the fact it runs identically on MS-Windows and Linux.

A couple interesting wrinkles to this tool:

1. UML designer
2. dynamic object browser

Features like these, just five years ago, would boost the price of a C++ IDE from the below $500 price range to a lofty thousand to two thousand dollar price range.

Programming tools have taken a huge turn for the better in the past decade. A lot of this seems to have sprung forth from two things:

1. Apple's ushering-in of object-oriented and GUI-style programming a quarter of a decade ago, with the Apple Lisa and then the Apple Macintosh
2. Richard M. Stallman's insistence over two decades ago that a lot of important software be written as free, open source software.

If those two things did not change the world of software-for-programmers more dramatically than anything else, I do not know what did.

Here is more info, from its home page:

Mondrian Ruby IDE:

Mondrian is a cross-platform project-manager and editor for the Ruby language. Written in
100% native Ruby using the FOX GUI toolkit, Mondrian has the familiar look and feel of a modern IDE
while remaining dedicated to the uniqueness of the Ruby language and its community.

Technorati tags: ruby, programming, software, uml, designing, oop