IDE Question

[Aaron "Castironpi" Brady]

On Oct 15, 1:07 pm, Stef Mientki <stef.mien... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Steve Phillips wrote:
> > Hi All,
> > I am just wondering what seems to be the most popular IDE. The reason
> > I ask is I am currently at war with myself when it comes to IDE's. It
> > seems like every one I find and try out has something in it that
> > others don't and viceversa. I am in search for the perfect IDE and
> > after many months of searching, I always come back to IDLE to do what
> > I need to do. I want to use Komodo badly but the one issue I have with
> > that is sometimes the auto-complete works and other times it doesn't.
> > Even if I carbon copy a script.
>
> So what are the specs of the "perfect IDE" ?
snip

I think the editors you see are too high-contrast in their color
scheme.  I look at PyCrust, etc., and NetBeans Java.  The bold, plus
italics, plus color, is too much.  I know it's exciting to be
recognizing patterns and changing fonts, but they overdo it, at least
in these cases.  If you're browsing code contrast is important, but if
you're looking at one screen or two for an extended time, you'll pick
out subtleties after a short time.

I look, sorry all, at Google Groups for an example of mild color
gradients.  I see two different grays and three blues on the current
screen alone.  I could see that as being popular one day.

As for keyboard action, the response time from a keystroke to the
visual reaction, I like mine as fast as possible, lowest lag.  I don't
think that's necessarily as popular, or necessarily as important,
especially if the IDE is written in Python.

You might like to, for the step-through functionality, add a
'settrace' on every thread if possible, overriding the thread module
if necessary.  I would also have appreciated a step through in the
ver. 2.6. 'multiprocessing' module, but that could get difficult,
since each separate instruction pointer spawns a new process.  It
would be even more valuable, and even pedagogically instructive, if
you could control what thread takes its turn next when you're running
more than one.

Keyboard shortcuts are one thing I like about my editor (the one I
prefer), which has hardly any non-essential features at all (in
contrast to emacs I understand).  You can select shortcut groups and
assign number keys.  'Bloodshed-Dev' did not overdo that one, since
they are developing for multiple platforms, and the conventions vary
considerably-- ctrl vs. alt, function keys, &c.  Arrow-movement is
emphasized in mine, with ctrl-arrow, alt-arrow, shift-arrow, all
having functions, plus ctrl-tab for changing file displayed.

The scope of the projects you're gearing to support is a variable--
you want fast startup times if the target projects are going to be
small, but good browsing abilities if they are large.  I haven't liked
the default behavior when identifiers are found that can't be placed
in a namespace, namely lumping them all together and sorting.  10
pixels vs. 12 can make a difference in overall look and feel in the
icons in your browser, and if you have one week to your release date,
I'd rather have an extra week into key response time, than in the
icons.

My $.02.