I have to admit I have tried using various IDE?s to build Ruby on Rails applications, Aptana RadRails and NetBeans are two, yet have come back to TextMate each time. I can?t say any of what I have tried were particularly bad, actually they were pretty good, but seemed a bit hefty for the work at hand. Recently, JetBrains released RubyMine 1.0 as their entry into Ruby IDE?s. I started using it for a couple of Rails projects I have been working on and I have to say, I am impressed with it so far. I plan to write up a further review or result of my work later here and on InfoQ but I need to work with it a bit more.
In the meantime, I had the opportunity to speak with the lead developer of RubyMine, Dmitry Jemerov, about RubyMine and the direction they are taking. It seems they are listening intently to their users. I can say this because as a RubyMine beta tester I had issues and they were promptly addressed.
The future looks bright for this product and I intend to keep using it to give it a fair test. Please take a few minutes to read my interview on InfoQ titled Talking RubyMine with JetBrains Developer Dmitry Jemerov.