How do you program in Python?

[Peter Hansen]

James wrote:
> Peter Hansen wrote:
>>I edit in the Scite window, hit Alt-Tab (under Windows XP) to change
>>focus to the cmd console (and instantly all my modified files are
>>saved), press the Cursor Up key to retrieve the previous command (which
>>is generally the name of my script, or a command like "python
>>myscript.py"), and hit Enter to execute it.
> 
> Just curious. Why do you Alt-Tab to a console when you can just hit F5
> in SciTE? That's just 1 key instead of 4. And yes, SciTE can autosave
> here too.

Probably a variety of reasons.  You might say ignorance is one of them 
(since I wasn't consciously aware of that feature), but it's really that 
I deliberately choose not to use and learn about such features of 
editors because I absolutely _hate_ getting tied to such things and 
finding myself stuck in other editors or on other machines and having my 
productivity drop to zero because a simple feature is missing.

This is the same reason I no longer use any IDE, nor have any interest 
whatsoever in them other than out of simple curiosity.  I used to learn 
all kinds of details about things like VisualCafe, CodeWright, IDLE, Boa 
Constrictor, Borland C++, a dozen different Microsoft products... no 
longer!  If I didn't have Scite, I'd be able to use DOS Edit almost as 
effectively, and by observation I've concluded that using such primitive 
tools I'm often more effective than others around me who are "stuck" 
using the latest featureful tools...

Also, I lied when I said cursor up retrieved the name of the script. 
Since I develop using Test-Driven Development, and use a simple suite of 
utilities to manage the test files and such, I'm more often executing 
something like "story015 TestCase.test03", or perhaps just "u" (which 
runs all unit tests in the current folder), rather than the name of the 
script which I happen to be editing.

Judging by how F5 appears to work, it wouldn't save me keystrokes 
either: I'd most likely be in some *other* file making changes (i.e. one 
of the modules under test) but would need to hit Alt-9 (or a bunch of 
Ctrl-Tabs) to switch to wherever story015.py was sitting.  The file I 
want to run won't always be the one under my cursor, nor perhaps even 
loaded.

After 25 years doing this, I've become something of a Luddite as far as 
fancy IDEs and non-standard features go... and a huge believer in strict 
decoupling between my tools, to the point of ignoring things that bundle 
them together in ways that are, in my opinion, too tight.  Sorry! :-)

-Peter