Commercial IDEs: is it worth it?

[Guido Goldstein]

Hi!

On Wed, 22 Jan 2003 12:08:46 +0100
  "Thomas Weholt" <2002 at weholt.org> wrote:
> Hi,
[...]
> I was wondering; are there any commercial IDEs out there that really beats
> Emacs? Looked at WingIDE and it looks nice, but $149 for the standard
> version??!!!

I took a look at wingIDE and was not convinced to buy it.
Ok, I'm an (X)emacs user also and therfore my standards are quite high
-- I guess. :)

[...]
> ( Opinions on other free editors that might fit my needs would also be
> interesting. Looked briefly at VIM and used IDLE earlier. )

I encountered eric3 and was pleased. Really...
It does graphical debugging, some projekt administration (mainly keeps
the python files together) and works well enough (if you can forget
the C-a to move to the beginning of a line :).

Also, the Author (maintainer?) is *very* responsive and friendly.
I've to admit that this point was the one that convinced me to give it
a deeper look.

Yes, there're drawbacks (in order of importance):
 1. Documentation
 2. Documentation
 3. Documentation

But, hey!, it's OpenSource and for free.
And the feature list is already impressive (and growing...).

If you want to take a look:
  http://www.die-offenbachs.de/detlev/eric3.html

HAND
  Guido