"False exceptions?" (was Re: theme of the week: tools

[Dan Perl]

"Marco Aschwanden" <PPNTWIMBXFFC at spammotel.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.3996.1096354841.5135.python-list at python.org...
> On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 12:04:47 -0400, Dan Perl <danperl at rogers.com> wrote:
>
> I myself felt disturbed by your comments on WingIDE. But yes, I do 
> understand your nagging on "false exceptions" which can be turned off. You 
> turned it down because of this and because the short trial period (which 
> can be prolonged with 1 button click)... well, it didn't seem fair towards 
> the tool. It has its shortcomings but the ones you mention are ridiculous.

The 10 day trial period just gave me a bad first impression and the 
explanations for the false positives just left me with a bad taste.  I gave 
up on Wing because of the false positives (their simple existence, even 
without the explanations) and the lack of a class browser.  I encountered 
the false positives first and I almost gave up right there.  But it was just 
the first day and I thought I should look more.  Like you say, I wanted to 
be fair.  When I found that the class browser is not supported in the 
Personal edition I threw my arms in the air.

To be fair again to Wing, I gave up on it based on the false positives 
before finding out that I could have switched to another debug mode.  But 
that's their fault too because the widget that came up with the false 
positive just says you can ignore the exception and then there was something 
else just praising the tool, but there was no mention of the different debug 
modes.  I found that option only once I searched the manual.  Maybe it's 
just me, but I'm not reading the manuals when I'm trying out several tools.

My "nagging" on the false positives is mostly on the spin that Wingware puts 
in their explanations.  It's one thing to explain it the way that Stephan 
did, that it was better to offer something imperfect if that was also 
providing some important advantages and then also offer the other 
alternative ("We weighed having a necessarily imperfect but useful feature 
with not having the feature at all.").  And it's another thing to insist 
that this is not a problem and it is actually good for you.  This doesn't 
seem to bother other people as much as it bothered me, but I do have a beef 
with it.

I'm curious to know what disturbed you in my comments.

> It beats Komodo 3.01 in some aspect:
> - it shines when it comes to auto-completion. No need to feed some 
> "intelligent database" for each and every file you introduce like in 
> Komodo (first crash while building the database).
> - in my case it works seamlessly with wxPython. Komodo crashed constantly. 
> Auto-completion with wxPython did never work (tried on 2 machines)
> - WingIDE is much more robust although beta than Komodo, which crashed 
> about 5 times during 3h of work (Win2K; about 20 times because of wxPython 
> are not taken into account). WingIDE does not crash since around patch 3 
> (we are now at patch 8).
>
>
> So I would say:
>
> Use Komodo if you:
> - are programming as well in other languages that Komodo supports (PHP, 
> Perl, Python, HTML, ...)
> - need built-in cvs access
> - can live with an IDE that crashes from time to time
>
> Use Wingware if you:
> - need a good "intelligent" auto-completion even for wxPython, pyQt, ...
> - need an extensible IDE (you may in future add your own tools easily)
> - need an IDE that focusses on Python and that tries to do the best on 
> this single language
> - can live with an IDE that does not look as polished as Komodo
>
> This comparison is not perfect. But you may realize that I turned it down 
> for it constantly crashing on me (which might be a problem of me and my 2 
> machines) and the useless auto-completion (constantly feeding the 
> database; does not work with wxPython). Those 2 points were in my case the 
> show stopper. Sad, because the idea behind Komodo is just great, the looks 
> is fantastic... I will give it another chance with 4.0...

I used Komodo for about a month and it never crashed.  As a matter of fact, 
when the license expired, I let it run for several days and then I just had 
to reboot my machine for other reasons (I am using Win XP, BTW).  And I have 
used it with wxPython already, although probably not as extensively as you 
have.

I actually prefer the auto-completion in Komodo.  Yes, it doesn't always 
work because sometimes it has to learn first, but on the other hand I felt 
that Wing tries to do too much.  I don't need auto-completion for every 
little name that I'm using and Wing's auto-completion was rather annoying me 
even after I adjusted the pause period.  I didn't find any option to disable 
auto-completion selectively for things like locals.  I also didn't see a 
function usage showing up in Wing the way I am getting it in Komodo (and I 
want that), but maybe that was a preference that I had to turn on and I 
didn't know about it.  I later saw something similar in a screen shot but 
maybe that's also not in Wing's Personal edition.

So your 2 show stoppers do not apply for me.  As for your other arguments, I 
am using Komodo only for Python and not for any other languages and I am 
using winCvs for CVS access.  Still, during one month of use (more than a 
month now), Komodo satisfied all my needs.

> Happy wing user,
> Marco
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