Python Development Environments?

baxissimo asks: "I've played around with Python a bit, and as a scripting language I quite like it. So I sat down the other day to see if I could use it to make a modest OpenGL/GUI application on Windows. The short story is I gave up. I couldn't get the Python IDE I had to run--but that didn't stop me. At first I just shrugged my shoulders and said to myself 'Ah, who needs it? I've got emacs,' and then proceeded to waste a few hours trying to cobble together an app that would run before it dawned on me that Python without a decent IDE is definitely not easier to use than C++ with an IDE. So is anyone out there actually using Python to make serious apps? What tools are you using?" "I've heard the wxPython bindings are nice for the GUI bits, so I downloaded those, and pyOpenGL, and numPy, and PIL, etc. The only recommendation I really saw anywhere for an IDE was for boaConstructor, so I got that. Unfortunately it only spit out a useless error messages on startup and died. What I'd really like to start doing is creating C++/Python hybrids, but given that I was unable to successfully debug a pure Python app, I'm wondering what it's going to be like when my bugs might be in either language. How do people deal with this? What tools help you get the job done? If there's nothing free that works, are there any commercial IDE's worth the money?"

Comments

Options

[Fished]

There are several options out there that you may not have tried:

• Eric3
• Kimodo
• IDLE (included with Python).
• Black Adder ($$)
• Wing IDE ($$)

Not all of these provide any tools for graphical development, so you'll need to look to see which meets your needs. One other option might be to use Jython and swing/awt/swt.

Excluding bugs that is

[madmaxx]

So C++ is easier than Python without an IDE?

I think you might be missing out on some of the most important features of Python (or any decent scripting language these days): it's a high level lanugage, intended to be easier to use than lower-level languages like C/C++. Whining about a lack of GUIs is besides the point.

Once you know Python, and understand some of the GUI toolkits, it's far more productive than C/C++ with similar toolkits. So is Perl, Java, or C# for that matter. It sounds like you don't know Python and related GUI toolkits very well yet, though, which is one place where an IDE can be used to limp along for a while.

In case you haven't noticed, an IDE is really a simple set of tools, which exist for nearly every language already -- though not always packaged together. Get over it: your best toolkits won't come in one package, ever. Any good craftsman will learn to piece together a master's toolkit for any problem set, and use those tools when/where appropriate. IDEs, in general, are the Walmart AllInOne toolkit. Okay if you don't know any better, and the problems are small, but not often suited for anything of scale. Think I'm being a twit? How many IDEs are used in production build environments? (Hint: none)

So back to your baseless productivity point: Python is more productive, in general, than C/C++. This includes GUI work without an IDE, and a lot of server problems that are usually mashed into using C/C++. Why? The language (and libraries) focus on ease of use ... and are not encumbered by aspects of the underlying hardware leaking through the abstractions. Things like direct memory access, pointers, and references have their place, but are the root of a large amount of debugging time. GUIs in the lower-level languages waste a lot of time with low-level bugs (though there is a chance that performance will be better).

GUI work without a GUI builder you say? If it's too tedious for you, then automate it (Python happens to be really handy for that). Most GUIs are built around schemas or specifications anyways -- using a GUI builder only speeds up the tedium (it doesn't solve it). And you'll want to know the GUI toolkit well enough to automate with it anyway (using it in ignorance with a GUI builder is buggy in itself). Don't get me wrong, there are some great GUI builders for Python, but don't rely on it to save you from learning something.

One of the best IDEs I've found (and I've used a lot of IDEs) is the OS, and tangent language tools themselves. For Perl, I use Vi, Gedit, or Textpad for my editor, GladeXML or perl scripts to generate UIs, bash/MakeMaker for my build system, and the other Unix tools to fill in the gaps. I've used some of the Perl IDEs in production environments, and they're all limited somewhere. Don't settle for one tool, as your tools contribute to the quality/quantity of what you produce. You can be in control.