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Best Cross-Platform, GUI Editor/IDE For Python?

Posted by timothy on from the go-my-son-and-seek-it-out dept.

What do you find is the best text editor for Python software development? I've tried several, and I'm always frustrated by the limitations of each. Eclipse is cool, but it's huge, and I've had multiple problems with corruption of the workspace. It got so bad at one point that every week or so I was tearing it down and recreating it. I spent so much time re-creating Eclipse's workspace that I found any productivity gains were lost due to Eclipse's brokenness. (Read more below.)

Morgan Greywolf continues: "I've also done the Emacs thing. Emacs is cool, but I found that I missed code browsing. So then I installed the Emacs Code Browser, Semantic and associated elisp code and found that it didn't work right half the time. I also seem to prefer either vi/Vim style editors, CUA-style editors, or WordStar-style editors.

Unfortunately, there are no GUI WordStar-style editors and none of them are cross-platform with Windows.

So, that left me with Scintilla/SCiTE. Which is nice, but, the code browsing doesn't seem to be able do autocomplete with PyGTK (to be fair, Eclipse's didn't work so well, either in that regard, at least not on the default Ubuntu install)

SCiTE loads fast, does nice Python highlighting, and has the ability to run code right from the browser. Unforutnately, unlike Eclipse or Emacs, there's no ability to do step/trace style debugging. *sigh*

So, okay, does anyone have any other ideas?"

4 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Some of what I've looked at and use by stoolpigeon · · Score: 5, Informative

    komodo edit is an extremely powerful editor that works with a slew of languages on Windows, Mac and Linux. It is free as in beer. It is packaged by ActiveState as just an editor - but really it has many features that fall more into the IDE camp - yet it is light-weight and responsive - more like an editor. This review of komodo edit may be helpful.
     
      Komodo IDE is the big brother to Komodo edit I guess. I've never used it because the cost is outside my budget. ($295 for a full single user license - there is a student version but I don't know what it costs)
     
      SPE is free/free I believe. It is multiplatform and the price is right to at least give it a try.
     
    All these and more are listed on the python ide page of the python.org wiki.
     
    Personally - right now I use Komodo edit while I wait for python support in netbeans.

    --
    It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
  2. Vi/Vim! by thedak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Vi/Vim/GVim!

  3. Trouble with eclipse on ubuntu by tangent3 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've had problems using Eclipse on Ubuntu before, the problems you had with Eclipse may be related.

    1. Don't use the repositories for Eclipse. Download the linux version directly from the eclipse website, and run it.
    2. Eclipse has problems with the default gcj jvm for Ubuntu. Solution here

    I suggest giving Eclipse another look. Download the latest ganymede, fix the jvm, add http://pydev.sourceforge.net/updates/ to your update sites.

  4. Bullshit by BcNexus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And one more thing: There is this think called 'Google' [justfuckinggoogleit.com], you may have heard of it. It usually answers this sort of question in under 10 seconds.

    Google will not give him concise recommendations based on personal experience from people he trusts. Slashdot will.