theme of the week: tools

[Dan Perl]

"Carlos Ribeiro" <carribeiro at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.3864.1096040439.5135.python-list at python.org...
> I'm also evaluating Wing IDE 2.0; I had a few issues with it that were
> solved, but for some tasks I found it too heavy for my limited
> resources. Anyway, I'm keeping an eye on it.

I didn't follow the entire IDE dispute and I apologize if my comments are 
now redundant, but here are my 2 cents.

I just bought the Komodo Personal edition.  I had already used the trial 
download for a month and I've been quite satisfied with it.  That's after 
using PythonWin for a few months, but it would be hard to go back to 
PythonWin now.

Before making the decision to buy Komodo, I also evaluated Wing IDE 2.0, 
their Personal edition.  Please indulge me, but I have to take a load off my 
chest about Wing IDE.

Right off the bat, the trial period was only 10 days.  I've evaluated quite 
a few tools that had a free trial period and I don't think I can remember of 
ever having only 10 days before.  Then, the GUI is kind of awkward in a few 
places (the "project tree view", or something like that, and the toolbars). 
There is more.  The Personal edition does not have an object browser (it's 
only in their more expensive editions).  With all due respect, that's a 
minimal requirement in a commercial IDE these days and Komodo has one in its 
Personal edition (for the same price as Wing IDE).

I left my biggest beef with Wing IDE for the end.  I debugged one of my 
scripts (that I knew it works) and got an unexplainable exception.  It turns 
out that Wing IDE falsely detects some exceptions.  They know about it and 
they suggest that if you KNOW that it's a false exception you should flag it 
to be ignored.  Yes, Wingware people, I know it's a false exception, but 
what am I using an IDE with debugging for if I have to figure out false 
exceptions and ignore them?  And how do I know that that particular 
exception will not be valid some day in one of my scripts?  And please, do 
not insult our intelligence with some marketing mumbo-jumbo that Wing IDE's 
exception detection is so powerful that it even detects exceptions that are 
not there.  It's a BUG, it's not a feature, folks!  And no excuse will make 
up for it!

The choice between Wing IDE and Komodo was clear for me.

As a side note, among free open-source IDEs, I thought that pydev (a plugin 
for eclipse) shows promise, but it's not ready yet for the big leagues.

There.  Thanks for listening.

Dan