Got NetBeans? Choose your weapons wisely
Some time ago, I got involved as a freelancer in a Rails project that required all developers to use the NetBeans IDE (by Sun Microsystems, back then). Boy NetBeans was part of their "agile" practices. But this was kind of a bummer for me, having never used such IDE before and mostly beign a long time "Java hater" myself.
Nevertheless, I had to set up my Rails development environment in NetBeans, learn it's tricks, shortcuts, options, preferences, etc. It probably took me a couple of days just to get it working into something useful to me, but it never made me feel much more "productive" in any way.
For what I had to do, I thought, NetBeans was an overkill; worst, it felt sluggish in my little GNU/Linux development box and, for all it's unique features, it's polluted UI just got in my way most of the times, distracting me from the real thing. I coped with it for the time being but eventually moved on somewhere else. On the other hand, the developers left behind most likely continued to use it in every other single next project.
Now that Oracle effectively killed the Ruby/Rails support in NetBeans 7.0 onwards, I think they might regret their choice of an IDE and just may be have had their "practices" disrupted at least a little bit? Bummer?
Nirvana is like a drug
Some time later I got my first beloved MacBook, a leap of faith fueled by the promise of TextMate's programmer-Nirvana. And it was, almost. TextMate was beatifully simple and fast, yet extremely powerful. But then it got into abandomware-land. It's wonderful community was still there, but it's sole developer failed to deliver it's long-awaited version 2.0 on time. Some just couldn't wait for it anymore. Me, I was kinda OK, but then I killed my MacBook spilling a glass of tea over it. I got kicked out of Nirvana and was back to GNU/Linux on commodity hardware. Bummer.
But boy it was hard to let go TextMate. Worse, being closed-source, there's absolutely no chance it'll ever find it's way out of Mac OS X.
Back on GNU/Linux, GEdit does a wonderful job mimicking much of TextMate sweetest features, and even has some great Rails plugins. Best of all, it's truly free and it'll be there as long as anyone cares to keep it alive. Plus, it's cross-platform, if you really want it to run elsewhere.
But GEdit is no TextMate, and it certainly has a long way to become something as powerful. I keep my hopes high, but by this time I was just getting tired of having to re-learn something as basic as a text-editor to get my programming job done every so an then. Worse, the spare time I had to devote to that task was ever-diminishing. Wasn't there just something like a long-term solution to address such a common programmer's need?
Enter VIM
Then I sold my Hackintosh, the carcase of my MacBook and got an used Mac mini. I lost no time setting a Rails environment on it but got a new problem: I could go back to TextMate, but then I could not use it in my Ubuntu netbook, which was (and still is) my main development computer.
So finally a had the definitive excuse to learn VIM. Thanks to a wealth of great resources I overcame all initial frustrations and syncronized the same VIM configuration on both GVIM and MacVim. A couple of weeks later I was on my way of getting more productive in my code-editing than I ever was on either TextMate or GEdit, no matter what OS I happen to be using at that moment.
My humble advice: Don't get put off by VIM steep learning curve. You'll only have to learn the basics of two "modes" of operation and a few shortcuts to get it going, which is the same thing you'll have to do if learning any other editor anyway. But as soon as you get there you'll begin to realise it is in another whole different leage.
Conclusion
Time is a precious resource. When investing it in something as fundamental as your coding editor of choice, make sure it's well spent. Propietary, closed-source, or privately held projects are just not worth your time nor money in the long run. Do not mind the hype around them. Choose wisely and move onto more important things. Like growing your career or programming expertise.
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