I’m going to change the tools that I use to code in Ruby for the first time in four years. You see, I must be one of the very very few Ruby-programming Mac-users that doesn’t like Textmate.

This is pretty much heresy to most Rubyists.

I used to think I didn’t like Textmate because of the single window interface. Multiple windows could be positioned exactly where I want them (that window only has a couple of lines in it so I can keep that tiny and see both that and that other file at the same time). Tabs are all the same size for each file and you can’t keep them arranged as you want them.

But then I bought the MacHeist bundle. And got a little web-developer’s editor called Espresso. I really like MacRabbit’s CSSEdit so was looking forward to trying Espresso. And like it I did. I even got over my tabbed interface problems (maybe nicely styled tabs with a list view beats ugly tabs with a drawer). But there was a problem. Espresso is crap for Rails development (despite Elliott Cable’s ruby “sugar”).

So, having been spoilt by an “integrated” editor, but still not liking Textmate, where could I go? Coda, by Panic, was where. And I have to say I really like it. It’s not perfect, it’s taken me about a week to get my head round how things hang together. But it deals with ruby and rails and is extensible.

Which is enough to make me shell out the $99. And change the way I work pretty fundamentally.