Ranting about the state of Python IDEs for Windows

[Ben Last]

> From Carlos Ribeiro
> I'm frustrated. My search for a good IDE to support my activities --
> doing development for Python in the Windows environment -- are not
> being succesful as I had originally dreamt...
Rather than attempt to convert you to $MyFavouriteTool here, I'll suggest
another way to look at the problem.  Treat the operating system as the IDE
(as old Unix hands will know).  For example - I use either SPE or Boa to do
my Python editing - often leaving one instance of SPE running with many
files open.  For running scripts, much of the time I'm in a cygwin
(http://www.cygwin.com/) window; I tend to keep one open running the Python
interpreter also, as a quick-and-dirty shell for testing things out.  If I
need a debugger it's Boa or maybe PythonWin.  The same file may be flung
from one tool to the other depending on what I'm doing.  Boa scores heavily
for Zope authoring, where 90% of the code is in a Python module that
provides external methods for the web environment.  SPE scores as a nice
editor, most of the time; especially since if it's closed down it'll reopen
with all the same files as before.
In other words, don't look for one tool that does it all, but assemble a set
of them, and use parts of each.
ben