Choosing a Python IDE. what is your Pythonish recommendation? I

[Dietmar Schwertberger]

On 04.01.2017 07:54, Antonio Caminero Garcia wrote:
> Unfortunately most of the time I am still using print and input functions. I
know that sucks, I did not use the pdb module, I guess that IDE debuggers 
leverage such module.
pdb is actually quite useful. On my Windows PCs I can invoke python on any .py 
file with the -i command line switch by right clicking in the Explorer and 
selecting "Debug". Now when the script crashes, I can inspect variables without 
launching a full-scale IDE or starting the script from the command line. For 
such quick fixes I have also a context menu entry "Edit" for editing with 
Pythonwin, which is still quite OK as editor and has no licensing restrictions 
or installation requirements. This is a nice option when you deploy your 
installation to many PCs over the network.

For the print functions vs. debugger: The most useful application for a 
debugger like Wing is not for bug-fixing, but to set a break point and then 
interactively develop on the debugger console and with the IDE editor's 
autocompletion using introspection on the live objects. This is very helpful 
for hardware interfacing, network protocols or GUI programs. It really boosted 
my productivity in a way I could not believe before. This is something most 
people forget when they evaluate programming languages. It's not the language 
or syntax that counts, but the overall environment. Probably the only other 
really interactive language and environment is Forth.

> If it happens to be Arduino I normally use a sublime plugin called Stino
> https://github.com/Robot-Will/Stino
> (1337 people starred that cool number :D)
Well, it is CodeWarrior which was quite famous at the time of the 68k Macs. The 
company was bought by Motorola and the IDE is still around for 
Freescale/NXP/Qualcomm microcontrollers like the HCS08 8 bit series. Around ten 
years ago the original CodeWarrior IDE was migrated to something Eclipse based.
When I last evaluated HCS08 vs. Arduino, the HCS08 won due to the better debug 
interface and native USB support. HCS08 is still quite cool, but when it comes 
to documentation, learning curve, tools etc. the Arduinos win....


Regards,

Dietmar