So far

[CppNewB]

I am absolutely loving my experience with Python. Even vs. Ruby, the syntax
feels very clean with an emphasis on simplification.

My only complaint is that there doesn't appear to be a great commercial IDE
for the language. I've tried Komodo, etc and they are nice applications,
but they don't feel like they give me the "power" like a Visual Studio or
Delphi (I wish I could articulate better the differences). Finding a
descent GUI builder has been a challenge as well. Most of them have support
for Dialogs, but what about more complex UI's? I may need a resizable frame
within a resizable frame? I haven''t found a GUI builder with a great feel
yet.

Other than that, my experience has been wonderful. Even after my
complaints, I plan on sticking with Python for a while.

 

[UrsusMaximus]

Try PythonCard

Ron Stephens
Python Learning Center
a prententious name for a nice hobbyist resource
www.awaretek.com/plf.html

 

[UrsusMaximus]

Try PythonCard

Ron Stephens
Python Learning Center
a prententious name for a nice hobbyist resource
www.awaretek.com/plf.html

 

[Benji York]

Most of them have support for Dialogs, but what about more complex
UI's? I may need a resizable frame within a resizable frame? I
haven''t found a GUI builder with a great feel yet.

I *highly* recommend wxDesigner. I've used it extensively. It's cheap
and has a demo version you can download (the demo can't save your
designs, but can generate code so you can try it out).

 

[Christophe]

CppNewB a écrit :

I am absolutely loving my experience with Python. Even vs. Ruby, the syntax
feels very clean with an emphasis on simplification.

My only complaint is that there doesn't appear to be a great commercial IDE
for the language. I've tried Komodo, etc and they are nice applications,
but they don't feel like they give me the "power" like a Visual Studio or
Delphi (I wish I could articulate better the differences). Finding a
descent GUI builder has been a challenge as well. Most of them have support
for Dialogs, but what about more complex UI's? I may need a resizable frame
within a resizable frame? I haven''t found a GUI builder with a great feel
yet.

Other than that, my experience has been wonderful. Even after my
complaints, I plan on sticking with Python for a while.

Try PyQT with eric3 as an IDE.

http://www.die-offenbachs.de/detlev/eric3.html

 

[Michael Schneider]

Take a look at:

http://wingware.com/

It is only $35.00 for an IDE. (30 day free eval version)

I use eclipse for java, and have become quite fond of tab completion.

Mike

 

[bruno modulix]

I am absolutely loving my experience with Python. Even vs. Ruby, the syntax
feels very clean with an emphasis on simplification.

My only complaint is that there doesn't appear to be a great commercial IDE

Why "commercial" ?

 

[Jaime Wyant]

I am absolutely loving my experience with Python. Even vs. Ruby, the syntax
feels very clean with an emphasis on simplification.

Yes. We all love python, welcome aboard!

My only complaint is that there doesn't appear to be a great commercial IDE
for the language. I've tried Komodo, etc and they are nice applications,
but they don't feel like they give me the "power" like a Visual Studio or
Delphi (I wish I could articulate better the differences). Finding a
descent GUI builder has been a challenge as well. Most of them have support
for Dialogs, but what about more complex UI's? I may need a resizable frame
within a resizable frame? I haven''t found a GUI builder with a great feel
yet.

wingide is really nice, but costs money. It supports auto-completion
in a really intelligent way. However, it was just too resource hungry
on my laptop - (1.4ghz Pentium(m), 512 mb ram). Sometimes
autocompletion was just too slow (i noticed the HD spinning).

You're probably not going to find a GUI builder that has a nice
polished feel, like Delphi or Visual studio. The *closest* thing you
may find to this would be Python's Boa-Constructor
(http://boa-constructor.sourceforge.net/).

If you choose to use wxPython as your GUI framework, then you may not
need a fancy-schmancy IDE. I find that xemacs along with xrced work
really well for me.

The toughest thing about wxPython (and wxWidgets) is wrapping your
brain around sizers. They're easy to understand -- until something
doesn't quite layout the way you expected. Unusual layouts are always
a programmer's misunderstanding of sizers (at least in my experience).

I recommend trying either wxGlade/xrced for gui building (i find
wxGlade's latest release to be *REALLY* unstable for me in windows).
Next use xemacs or Stanni's python editor to edit your code.

You'll be amazed at how productive you can be once you *learn* how to
handle building guis with one app, and manually tieing in the event
handlers in your editor of choice. This will also `not hide' a lot of
things that goes on behind the scenes.

Other than that, my experience has been wonderful. Even after my
complaints, I plan on sticking with Python for a while.

That's great!
jw

 

[Kenneth McDonald]

This is something I fought with for a long time. My overwhelming vote
is Eclipse with the PyDev plugin. (Google search should reveal this).
Here are the pros and cons.

1) Eclipse is a _big_ system, with a strong emphasis on Java. So
there's a lot of functionality you need to learn to ignore, and
finding all of the different settings you're interested in can be a
chore. And you'll need to learn the "Eclipse Way" (eg using
repositories.)

2) Also, some of the eclipse dialogs are not the most intuitive,
IMHO. Though to be fair, almost no programs do a good job of this.

3) But, given its weight, Eclipse is surprisingly fast.

4) Also, Eclipse has _very_ flexible (including multistroke)
keybindings. It comes with predefined emacs keybindings.

5) And, PyDev is really _quite_ nice. It can also use PyLint, which
is a big plus. (It was the first time I'd used PyLint, and it caught
a _lot_ of potential errors.)

6) Finally, the eclipse layout is very flexible, and can be set up to
be almost entirely keyboard-navigable.

The only _real_ problem is the eclipse learning curve. But, given
that eclipse will be around for a _long_ time, and given how nicely
PyDev is coming along, I actually expect this to become the de facto
standard Python editor (though it will take a while).

Oh yeah, installation is (pretty) simple.


Ken

 

[Paul Rubin]

Furthermore, Eclipse requires java and is thusly not provided on any
linux distro I'm familiar with, which I consider a huge roadblock. And
as mentioned, it's bloated.

It comes with Fedora Core 4 and is compiled with gcj.

I would suspect that the majority of Python programmers write in one of
vim or emacs. Anyone got stats?

I'm a long time emacs bigot but lately I've been editing Python with
IDLE. IDLE leaves a lot to be desired but its integration is very
convenient.

 

[Micah Elliott]

The only _real_ problem is the eclipse learning curve.

The only real *advantage* of Eclipse (over other suggested tools) is its
highly hyped automatic refactoring. Admittedly, I have not used it for
Python development, but I'm skeptical of the feasibility of
auto-refactoring in general, and therefore acknowledge *no* advantage.
Furthermore, Eclipse requires java and is thusly not provided on any
linux distro I'm familiar with, which I consider a huge roadblock. And
as mentioned, it's bloated.

But, given that eclipse will be around for a _long_ time, and given
how nicely PyDev is coming along, I actually expect this to become
the de facto standard Python editor (though it will take a while).

Was this a troll?? If so, you got me to bite. I haven't heard a
feature mentioned in this thread that can't be done at least as easily
with a capable text editor like vim or emacs.

I'm not trying to start another editor war here. They tend to have a
steeper learning curve than IDEs, but in my experience are largely worth
the learning investment. I just wanted to say that I really doubt the
possibility of Eclipse becoming anywhere near standard, given any amount
of time.

I would suspect that the majority of Python programmers write in one of
vim or emacs. Anyone got stats?

 

[Kenneth McDonald]

As I did mention in my original post, Eclipse is indeed bloated.
However, in spite of that, I've found it both fast and reliable (much
to surprise). The only real problem is learning what functionality
(the majority) to ignore.

PyDev offers nice integration with Python. If I run a python program
from within PyDev, errors are reported on the console, and clicking
on an error takes me to the offending line number. Jython is also
supported, though I haven't tried it.

I personally gave up on Emacs after spending four hours trying to get
a perfectly simple keybinding working, and receiving no response from
the emacs mailing list--they were apparently as mystified as I.

I don't mean to push Eclipse, but I looked at it several times before
trying it, and backed off due to the concerns mentioned here. Once I
actually sat down with it for about four hours to _concentrate_ on
it, though, it rapidly became obvious that it with PyDev really was
the best Python solution I'd found. If you do a lot of Python work,
it's worth the effort to learn.

Ken

 

[Michael Ekstrand]

The only real *advantage* of Eclipse (over other suggested tools) is
its highly hyped automatic refactoring. Admittedly, I have not used
it for Python development, but I'm skeptical of the feasibility of
auto-refactoring in general, and therefore acknowledge *no*
advantage. Furthermore, Eclipse requires java and is thusly not
provided on any linux distro I'm familiar with, which I consider a
huge roadblock. And as mentioned, it's bloated.

Eclipse is massively bloated. We're using it for a class I'm taking
where we have to program in Java... when I start Eclipse on my 1.7GHz
laptop w/ 256 MB ram, Eclipse is very slow and KDE takes forever to
switch desktops or applications... Eclipse running brings my entire
laptop to a near-standstill.

And refactoring: Eclipse has incredible Java refactoring, which works
beautifully due to Java's highly static nature. Eclipse is by far the
best tool I've ever seen for browsing and manipulating Java projects.
But Python's highly dynamic nature makes automatic refactoring
difficult, and I find Bicycle Repair Man has difficulty with even some
highly trivial refactoring things (renaming the variable in a for loop
in one place I tried to use it...).

I would suspect that the majority of Python programmers write in one
of vim or emacs. Anyone got stats?

+1 Vim. But no stats.

Perhaps a survey of Python source files found on the Internet for
prevailing modelines would be revealing?

- Michael