2019 Essential Ruby Developer Apps for Mac
RubyMine
RubyMine by Jet Brains is a superb IDE with unparalleled Ruby on Rails support. I recently switched from VS Code, after getting tired of continuously searching for extension after extension, hoping to improve VS Code’s lackluster Rails support. So-far, RubyMine has amazed me with its myriad of Rails-focused features. Here’s just a sample of the features RubyMine has:
Advanced support for Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, ERB, HAML, CSS, Sass, and more
Language-specific syntax-aware error highlighting helps you catch your mistakes before you spend hours trying to find that damn typo. It also helps you develop better coding habits but informing you of best practices via code inspections. Code inspections help you see if you’re following best practices w/ ‘On-the-fly’ improvement suggestions, provides you one-click fixes.
Intelligent code formatting makes stressing over your messy code a distant memory. The unparalled intelligent, context aware, auto-completion makes any coders life easier. You may even save a trip to Google thanks to the quick references to the docs while you’re coding.
The MVC view gives the programmer a wholistic view of the project. Smart search for classes, models, symbols, files, etc. makes navigating effortless.
My personal favorite is the automated refactoring. The intelligent, automated, and safe refactoring can perform project-wide-changes flawlessly. One click and your entire project can be accurately/safely refactored.
WebStorm
WebStorm, by Jet Brains, is the JavaScript focused sibling of RubyMine. I’ve been using this Javascript focused IDE when I’m mostly working on the frontend. WebStorm is extremely similar to RubyMine, but is optimized for JavaScript and associated frameworks and file-types. WebStorm is packed with features like intelligent code completion, ‘on-the-fly’ error detection, and smart refactoring; for JavaScript, TypeScript, stylesheet languages, and many popular frameworks.
iTerm2
iTerm2 is a great alternative to the out-of-the-box Mac terminal, it’s fully featured and extremely customizable. I personally enjoy it because of the quick dropdown terminal (I set it to cmd+T), so I can quickly clone GitHub repos and open it in my preferred IDE. I also enjoy it because I can customize it to look like this:
Magnet
As a previous Windows user, when I switched to Mac I was amazed at the lack of window management. There’s no way to organize windows out-of-the-box, that’s where Magnet comes in. Magnet adds window-snapping and window management shortcuts to MacOS. I use this app constantly to keep my windows somewhat managed.
Quiver
Quiver is another essential application I use daily, for note-taking in coding bootcamp. The markdown support makes it easy to quickly format your notes as you type them. It also supports code cells, which are complete with accurate syntax highlighting. I highly recommend Quiver for anyone that takes any sort of coding notes.
