Thoughts on Guido's ITC audio interview

[Paul Rubin]

Joseph Garvin <k04jg02 at kzoo.edu> writes:
> Also, everyone keeps discussing Eclipse as something that gives Java a
> leg up on Python. *Ahem* PyDev :) Which you should also give another
> try if you haven't in a few versions.  Easiest way to get a GUI
> debugger for python.

Can you give a brief description of what the Python debugger is like?
Can it debug multi-threaded Python programs?

IDLE has a rudimentary debugger that can be useful sometimes, but it
wedges up when you exit from it, making its usefulness limited.

> My only misgiving with Eclipse now is that I think development of
> plugins for it is always going to be slower than for Emacs and other
> editors because they have to be written in Java.

I had thought that using the Python debugging interface for required
writing C extensions.  There's a mention in the Python cookbook of
some C-only interface needed for cross-thread signalling.  What's up
with that?