One thing I noticed with my recent Ruby on Rails experiments is that the Rails community is embracing a “back to the old school” approach in terms of dumping visual tools in favor of command lines and scripts. For example, instead of using a database editor, you sculpt your schemas with code that edits the schema and gets run during deployments. There is a certain appeal to this, since it means that once you are skilled you no longer need to fight tools, but it does raise the bar a bit higher to achieve a basic level of competency. I definitely see the advantages, though I am not sure if it is the right choice for me (I need to do a real hands-on Rails project to know for sure). Which kind of tools work better for you?

J.Ja