I used to be a TextMate/Vim person, but NetBeans just has some really nice abilities. It integrates so well with version control systems. The auto-complete is

I used to be a TextMate/Vim person, but NetBeans just has some really nice abilities. It integrates so well with version control systems. The auto-complete isn't what I'd like it to be for Ruby, but seems better for other languages. It will run your program in NetBeans which makes it easy to fire up a development server without another window. It will handle lots of tasks like plugin management or rake tasks. Oh, and the refactor browser - I don't know how I ever renamed things without it. Now, it's absolutely ugly (at least on OS X), but it's relatively straight forward which I can't say for Eclipse. It might not be your cup of tea, but at the price of free, it's worth seeing if an IDE's tools such as its ability to spot parse errors, code completion, versioning integration, etc. will help you be more productive/happy.