best text editor for programming Python on a Mac

[Lawrence D’Oliveiro]

On Saturday, June 18, 2016 at 9:40:23 PM UTC+12, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:

> Michael Vilain:
> 
>> - expansion of keywords, variables, subroutines

Reminds me of a story by a local CompSci lecturer who originally learned Java through an IDE with autocomplete. Then one day he sat down to write some Java code without the benefit of autocomplete, and realized he didn’t know the language at all.

>> - integrated documentation so you don't have to lookup the syntax and 
>> arguments of a function
> 
> I have seen that in action with eclipse and Java. It could never match
> having a web browser window next to the editor window: <URL:
> https://docs.python.org/3/library/>.

I do exactly the same. Here’s my story: I’ve lost track of the number of times I have seen people write (in several different languages) sequences like

    x = ... expression for x ...
    y = ... expression for y ...
    s = math.sqrt(x * x + y * y)

instead of the more direct

    s = math.hypot(... expression for x ..., ... expression for y ...)

Would this “integrated documentation” to “lookup the syntax and arguments of a function” point out that math.hypot is a better function to use in this case than math.sqrt? No. For that, you have to actually be able to read and understand the reference documentation.

> Emacs doesn't take up the whole screen. It integrates seamlessly with
> the Unix way of doing things (but has some trouble with non-Unix culture
> items like Java).

Also an Emacs user here, even used it with Java (for Android).