python 3000 IDE? be warned: contentious

[charles loboz]

1. It seems that there are several Python IDEs in which many smart people
invested plenty of effort. We have WinPython, IDLE (do we still have it ?
;-)), ActiveState is coming up with Komodo (build on Mozilla) and I probably
missed a few here - apologies. Plus we have commercial ones.

2. Competition is good, splitting efforts probably less good. And there's a
fine line between them.

3. My abbreviated personal view about technology directions: Win will rule
the desktop, not only because of it's current popularity - but because it
has component model.  Linux doesn't have a native object model - which
creates scalability (in size and functionality) problems for applications.
Java on Linux will provide the component model but only for the Java world,
not Linux.

4. Good and lasting IDE is about modularity and ease of extension. While I
applaud the efforts of ActiveState I'm not sure that using Mozilla gives
enough fuel for the long run.

5. www.netbeans.org - please, please, please read the whitepaper on that!

6. Essentially this is an open source IDE for Java - but can be used for
most anything else. It's highly modular - you can customize/replace editor
or file system etc (see 5). There is some fantastic stuff there as well as
plenty of good design. Jython folks obviously are already having a peek at
it (naturally) - but this could be used for general Python, too. And used on
both platforms - NT and UNIX.

7. I'm not sure how well Netbeans functionality can be blended with
winpython. but then, i suspect that winpython functionality will blend with
.NET anyway.