Rails IDEs: NetBeans vs Apatana RadRails, take 2

If you're like me, you stopped using Aptana RadRails right around the point they went closed source and started rolling with NetBeans instead, which at the time was an arguably superior IDE that was also free, cash-wise. I guess most of us figured that RadRails wouldn't be getting any serious love after it's acquisition / whatever.

Well, let's time-travel to March 11th, 2008, where, suprisingly, Aptana RadRails 1.0 was released.

This is completely subjective opinionated review of NetBeans + Ruby vs Aptana RadRails, free version vs free version. I don't particularly care about what's a part of Eclipse or what's all Aptana, FYI, so take that in mind. In fact, I'm writing it up as I use it on a project right now.

Some stuff I like about Aptana RadRails:

1. * Faster than NetBeans. Waaaay faster. Loads faster, runs faster.
2. * Less memory usage than NetBeans.
3. * Faster, "locks up" less than NetBeans. Also, no "Mystery of the Disappearing Cursor / Caret" issues.
4. * Visual unit test results.
5. * Immediate window during debugging! Wah-hoo!
6. * Error checking puts a red 'X' next to files that have errors in them. Baffo!
7. * Subversion interface is better than NetBeans by a long mile. It's Subclipse, but whatever, it rocks.
8. * Sweet toolbar menu that lets you jump to view / test / model / controller associated with a file at the click of a button.
9. * "Outline" view is a bit better than NetBeans.
10. * Tag matching in HTML files works better than it does in NetBeans, which often just gives up without warning.
11. * Love the Servers view.
12. * Love the Rails Console stuff.

Some stuff I hate about Aptana RadRails:

1. * Migrations suck. NetBeans gives you a killer database migrations context menu where you can select the version number for quick up/down migrations.
2. * No clear way to import an existing Rails project (I only figured it out because I had used Aptana RadRails at one point in the past).
3. * Immediate window during debugging needs some serious, serious polish. Seriously.
4. * Have to press a button and wait like 20 seconds before the help text for a rake task appears. Would rather seem that text inline or somewhere easy to glance over.
5. * Have no idea how the Rails Plugin tab is supposed to work. Looks pretty, though.
6. * By default, Ruby Explorer view shows active gems... clutters up the UI quite a bit when you're dealing with a non-trivial project.
7. * NetBeans has way better string editing support. Highlight a string in NetBeans and press " and the entire selection will be surrounded by quotation marks (foo bar --> "foo bar"). Highlight inside of a string and press # and you'll get insta interpolation ("foo bar" --> "foo #{bar}").
8. * Some syntax highlighting isn't as nice as it is in NetBeans. Navigate to the end of a paraenthesis or an "end" statement; both do highlighting in NetBeans, but Aptana only handles the former. That's a pain when you're trying to sync up "end" statements after a long night of work.
9. * Doesn't open up files generated by script/generate by default, which is annoying, because why wouldn't I be ready to edit the files I just generated?!
10. * Still a really annoying issue of certain lines being highlighted in gray for no apparent reason.
11. * In general, colorization inside of Aptana RadRails sucks. Out of the box, NetBeans is much better at this. NetBeans is easily the best if you go for the optional ruby colorization plugin recently offered. I'm poking through syntax coloring options right now for RadRails 1.0 and it doesn't seem like there's any way to extensively customize it into something less sucky.
12. * Error checking is hit-or-miss. Doesn't seem to refresh fast enough -- if I make a modification to a file that causes an error and quickly fix it, occasionally the error tag never goes away -- or it changes to report an error on perfectly valid syntax.
13. * I just got a freakin' exception as it tried to perform code completion ("Content Assist"). Man, 3rdRail did that shit too. SWALLOW YOUR EXCEPTIONS. Log them somewhere or something. I was busy coding something when you the exception popped up. Not cool.

That's about it.

RadRails is OK, but I think it needs polish in general. As I understand it RadRails 1.0 was a one-man mission; not trying to harsh on the guy's work, just spittin' it as I see it.

I've gotten so used to NetBeans 6.0 and its creature comforts that I find coding in Aptana RadRails to be a real style-cramping exercise (I just finished up what I was doing in RadRails so I could switch back to NetBeans just now).

Your mileage may vary.

If you're using NetBeans 6 for Rails development, seriously consider getting the "Extra Ruby Color Themes." The Dark Pastels theme is a winner.