This post is mostly a whiny diatribe on how I’m a stupid idiot.
Mostly, when I code, I focus on logic: algorithms, object models and other back-end stuff. All the stuff that’s hard and doesn’t give any sort of gratification to the front-end developers or users because, well, it’s not on the front-end. The stuff I like to code are the elegant binary-keyed dictionary structures that route water in multiple simultaneous directions in a hydrologic model. It’s the stuff no-one sees.
Consequently, because I hate the design side,1 my apps generally look …

I’ve been turned on to JetBrains’ RubyMine quite a bit lately. Despite my affinity for more “old school” development environments like Emacs (which I used for many years in my former development life), I’ve really been enjoying working with RubyMine. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s winning my most recent “Screw this IDE crap, I’m going back to a text editor!” self-battle.
Still, we could always improve, and there’s one particular improvement that would be a dream come true for me (and insure that, following my 30 day trial, I actually …