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That there is the big reason I can never convince myself to stick with a language like Ruby or Python. I do about one project a year in one or the other, and a

That there is the big reason I can never convince myself to stick with a language like Ruby or Python. I do about one project a year in one or the other, and am always re-amazed at the lack of proper tools. It's a shame, because in other ways they're so good. The refactor you mention is single right click in C# (with ReSharper, and without the frankly terrifying idea of using Regexes to do it). Compounding matters is the fact that a huge portion of your unit tests simply evaporate once you realize that you simply can't have typos or type mismatches in an old dinosaur language like C#. So it's entirely possible that that big suite of testcases it took so long to refactor would not be necessary at all (replaced instead by the occasional int x;). Once somebody gets the tools together so I can be as productive in Rails as I am in ASP.NET, I'm jumping ship. Until then, I'm hanging tight.

ollysb 16y ago
I'm a java refugee and used to make heavy use of the refactoring tools in eclipse. It's definitely something I miss from my old workflow. Given you're using BDD there isn't really anything to be concerned about when using regexes etc. to manipulate the code. I'd say that learning to use the command line better is essential if you move to a dynamic language. With regards to the test suites being larger due to type checking I think it's been fairly well established now that this isn't the case. Those types of errors are always shown up when testing other aspects of your code, I can't think of a single case where I've written tests that do any type checking. In the end I find that losing the refactoring assistance is a tradeoff that I'm happy to make in exchange for the increased expressivity and productivity I enjoy with rails.
- jasonkester 16y ago
  You've piqued my curiosity. Why would a developer ever need to do anything (that affected his code) from the command line?
  - ollysb 16y ago
    Find and replace is probably the only time I use the command line to actually modify the code. I could use a text editor to do this but favour the power I get with the command line(using ack and sed). Using the command line isn't necessary to work with rails but it is favoured within the culture. Generally people use it for everything from running the server to checking code in and as mentioned, refactoring.

ollysb 16y ago

I'm a java refugee and used to make heavy use of the refactoring tools in eclipse. It's definitely something I miss from my old workflow. Given you're using BDD there isn't really anything to be concerned about when using regexes etc. to manipulate the code. I'd say that learning to use the command line better is essential if you move to a dynamic language. With regards to the test suites being larger due to type checking I think it's been fairly well established now that this isn't the case. Those types of errors are always shown up when testing other aspects of your code, I can't think of a single case where I've written tests that do any type checking. In the end I find that losing the refactoring assistance is a tradeoff that I'm happy to make in exchange for the increased expressivity and productivity I enjoy with rails.

jasonkester 16y ago
You've piqued my curiosity. Why would a developer ever need to do anything (that affected his code) from the command line?
- ollysb 16y ago
  Find and replace is probably the only time I use the command line to actually modify the code. I could use a text editor to do this but favour the power I get with the command line(using ack and sed). Using the command line isn't necessary to work with rails but it is favoured within the culture. Generally people use it for everything from running the server to checking code in and as mentioned, refactoring.