Knowing .NET

 Okay, this is pure gloating, but I get paid (or, at least, can justify time spent on…) to think about things as diverse as quantum computing, Ruby IDEs, and trustworthy Trackbacks. Even better, when Tina heard the humpback songstream she invoked a ‘We live in Hawaii’ break and we went up to freedive Puako Bay, where the whales sounded so close we kept expecting to see them appear in the distance (of course, they were actually about half-a-mile away).

So much better than having a nice car…

I’m arranging an interview with a VP at D-Wave, the quantum computer company. Any topics I should be sure to cover?

My long-time favorite Java editor JetBrains/IntelliJ IDEA has added a Ruby plug-in that supports Rails. My initial reaction is that the vitally important quality of code completion is well below that of both Ruby In Steel and Komodo. Don’t be too excited by the presence of the Analyze and Refactor menus either — they’re non-functional (or at least I couldn’t get them to work).

The little “ruby” icon beside ‘def HeloWorld’ navigates to the view for the action — that’s pretty slick. You can generate Rails entities (controllers, etc.) via right-click context menus and you can Rake from within IDEA.

My quick feeling is that the plug-in, while welcome, seems to fall well short of the functionality in Komodo and Ruby In Steel much less the full array of functionality available in IDEA (or even ReSharper).

I wonder if anyone else is working on a Ruby IDE.

Hmm… If a site delays its association with a spammer until after it’s been insinuated as a “friend” within target blogs, it can at a ripe moment trigger a slew of spammy FOAFbacks. Thoughts?