python 3000 IDE? be warned: contentious

[Alex Martelli]

"charles loboz" <phys137 at mailcity.com> wrote in message
news:96k7t3$kr8$1 at mail.pl.unisys.com...
    [snip]
> 3. My abbreviated personal view about technology directions: Win will rule
> the desktop, not only because of it's current popularity - but because it
> has component model.  Linux doesn't have a native object model - which

I share your enthusiasm for component-based technology, and consider
it the only current _technical_ plus of Win systems.  But, as for Linux, I
pin some hopes on XPCOM -- the COM clone technology of Mozilla.  It's
ok if it ain't "native" -- indeed, cross-platform seems preferable.  And
ActiveState has a Python XPCOM package -- I admit to not having tried
it yet (as one first needs to build Mozilla from sources, then add the
package) but what I see looks interesting indeed.  .NET is superior to
COM on most fronts (it should, as it was developed by roughly the same
folks with the advantage of years of practical experience!), but COM and
clones are good enough for most uses.

This has little to do with IDE's, per se -- component technology is
just as precious whatever kind of applications one is developing, be
they IDE's, accounting systems, or ray-tracers.  It's an issue of
whether each application is an island onto itself (or, at best, offers
some non-standardized ad hoc kludges to let other programs talk to
it), or rather, systematically, each and every application is designed
based on a collection of reusable components -- and is, implicitly, a
reusable component itself for potential higher-level applications.


Alex