The 3D picture of Python

[Brian Quinlan]

> That's their loss.  I find being able to click on a list of classes
and
> get immediately to a particular member function to be a good
convenience.

For my own code, I usually know the file location of every class and
there are more classes than files so it is easier to view my project by
file. The class browser also doesn't show you functions, which is
annoying as hell.

> Although truth be told, I much more often browse by file than by
class.
> That may be because of the small size of my current project, I wrote
all
> the code and I still know where everything is.

For large projects that I am unfamiliar with, I do use the class view
sometimes. 

> One of the more useful functions in VS is "Go to definition of...."
Can
> Visual Python do this?

That is a useful feature and it is not available in Visual Python. I'm
not sure how useful it would be when working with Python code though.
Keep in mind that VS is designed to provide features that are useful to
C++ programmers. Those same features may not be as useful in other
languages. OTOH, VS lacks features that are very useful for Python
development e.g. an interactive shell.

> I expect the debugger to go wherever the code is currently being
executed.
> I don't *care* if it's C++ code or Python code. 

But you will always be executing C code if you are executing Python
code. That's the problem. And, if you break in Python code, you will not
be in a convenient place to debug your C code (which requires a lot more
debugging effort than your Python code).

My debugging technique is to only use debugging tools for my C++ code.
That way I can target my own C++ functions/methods and not have to worry
about the Python runtime support code.

See my previous post for reasons why Python debuggers aren't as
necessary as C++ debuggers.

> I'm not interested in
> guessing about the program flow control.  I should be able to
> hierarchically expand or collapse the current call context.

I don't know what this means.

Cheers,
Brian