New in Python , Need a Mentor

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 3:24 AM, Wolfgang Strobl <news4 at mystrobl.de> wrote:
> Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com>:
>>I strongly recommend IDLE - much
>>better editing/recall facilities than the command-line Python has),
>>and work through the tutorial:
>
> Well, this is certainly a matter of taste.  I'd recommend using some
> small, language independent programmers editor and some modern
> distributed version control system  right at the beginning. Put your
> code, even the smallest snippets,  under version control, make that a
> habit.  Write small doctests for your code from the very beginning. Try
> to construct your code so that it works equally well as a module and as
> a standalone script   Don't start developing web applications, write
> some small utilities for your own needs, first.
>
> Personally, I suggest SciTE and TortoiseHG on Windows, but that too is,
> as I said, a matter of taste.

I don't edit code in IDLE, I just use it for interactive work. For
actual script editing, agreed (though I use git rather than hg), but
it really does help to have a way to *very* quickly test a line or two
of code.

ChrisA