New to python, do I need an IDE or is vim still good enough?

[Monte Milanuk]

On 12/27/2012 12:01 PM, mogul wrote:

> I'm new to python, got 10-20 years perl and C experience, all gained
> on unix alike machines hacking happily in vi, and later on in vim.

> Do I really need a real IDE, as the windows guys around me say I do,
> or will vim, git, make and other standalone tools make it the next 20
> years too for me?

If you've been using vi/vim happily, then I'd assume you're fully 
comfortable setting it up to do what ever you need.  In that case... I'd 
say stick with what you know.

Me, I have less 'invested' in any particular editor or environment, and 
I certainly don't 'need' a lot of the fancy extras that a lot of IDEs 
have... but setting up pydev/eclipse or spyder takes care of pretty much 
all that I need/want easily, and I can setup a fresh environment the way 
I want inside five minutes with a mouse, fairly intuitively, without 
having to go digging through config scripts and the web and books and 
such to figure out what does what.  I'd rather spend that time working 
on projects, not 'programming' my text editor.  It's neat and all if it 
works for you, but just doesn't turn my crank, personally.

I know a lot is made of the speed with which things can be done with vim 
and similar pure text editors... which is all well and good, but 
somewhere in the not-so-distant past I saw a comment which hit home for 
me.  Maybe its because I'm still just a hobbyist when it comes to 
coding, but I spend far more time 'thinking' about what I'm doing than 
typing things in... so shaving a few seconds here and there are less 
important to me.

YMMV,

Monte