Which IDE ?

[Michael Robin]

I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting a powerful IDE -
just because you are an experienced programmer doesn't mean you never
progress beyond booting your system with toggle switches.

I haven't found one py dev sol'n for all purposes. (Not that one
exists - but I'd like to get to the 80% stage...)

I use:
  - PythonWin for interactive prompts and debugger-assisted debugging.
    Good if you like the MDI interface.
    Also good to launch into the reference docs from your code.
  - Scite for editing. (Slightly prefer editor to PW's for some
reason.)
    Scite is good for "printf" style debugging as it can launch your
    app and has an output window. It's also good for "detached"
debugging,
    seeing it doesn't get in the way of GUI event loops, etc. Really
fast.
  - Komodo. Until recently this was too slow to use, but on my new
P-III,
    it's more usable. I've also had some stability problems, but if
things
    keep getting better, this could be a contender for frequent use.

I tried:
   - PythonWorks. It was slow as well, and personally I don't like the
interface.
     I'll go w/*nix on the server side, but currently my preferred
workstation platform
     is win2k, so I like a windowsy feel. PW's interface is just
"weird" to
     me, and doesn't have good keyboard shortcut support and OS
drag&drop, etc.
     As it's not politically correct to care about these features
anyway,
     and it's a cool and capable product - you should see if you like
it.
     (I reserve the right to change my mind on a whim anyway...)
 
Things I haven't tried:

   - Wing IDE (on my list to try)  
   - BoaConstructor (doesn't look quite ready yet)
   - BlackAdder (I don't have interest in Qt right now.)  
   - VisualPython for Visual Studio.NET (don't have .NET tools)

Some of the above also have GUI painters and are usually (always?)
specific to one GUI. Some are free, some are $$, but all at least have
free demos.

Just my $.02

mike


Alan Gauld <alan.gauld at bt.com> wrote in message news:<3B308FE8.282BD41 at bt.com>...
> D-Man wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 19, 2001 at 05:57:00PM +0100, phil hunt wrote:
> > | I think professional programmers often prefer simple tools (i.e.
> > | text editor and command line).
> > 
> > Sounds like a reasonable guess to me (at least wrt Unix programmers, I
> > think more MS Windows programmers use Visual Studio and other similar
> > tools).  
> 
> Yeah, thats one of the big culture differences between the 
> two groups. When we get a "Windoze guy" on contract who is 
> freaked by the *nix approach I usually explain it by says 
> that the OS *is* the IDE. Its just because Windows doesn't 
> provide the basic tools built ij that you have to use an IDE 
> to make up the difference. Stop thinking of the Unix tools 
> as separate programs and see the whole system as a big 
> textual based IDE and it starts to make sense.
> 
> Alan G