Getting up and running with Python on a Mac

[David C. Ullrich]

In article 
<7d593f8a-92b8-4dfe-935f-dd6a22c70faf at m45g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>,
 tkpmep at hotmail.com wrote:

> I've just bought an iMac (OS X 10.5.2, will almost immediately jump to
> 10.5.3), and am looking to install Python on it, and to use it with
> XCode, Apple's IDE. 

If that's what you really want to do then start XCode, select
New Project and look for the ones with "Python" in their names.

I was excited to hear that Python was going to be automatically
integrated into XCode in OS 10.5. I tried it once. I should say
I really didn't give it a fair trial - the impression I got from
my unfair trial was I'd have to learn a lot about Cocoa to do
anything useful. 

Searched a little, decided to try wxPython next, and I was
very happy with that. Seems much easier - also as far as I
could see there was nothing but a 'Hello World' example
included in XCode, while wxPython comes with a truly amazing
suite of complete examples (the C++ wxWidgets book recommends
looking at wxPython for the examples!)

>Some googling suggests that a number of people
> have had trouble getting Python to run satisfactorily on their Macs.
> This is my first Mac, and I'd appreciate some guidance on what to do
> (and what not to) when installing Python and potential problems to
> keep an eye open for. I want to do a fair bit of scientific /
> numerical computing, so it would seem that SAGE ot the Enthought
> Python distribution would seem to be the most relevant  - I'd
> appreciate your guidance on getting Python to run on a Mac with a
> particular focus on these two distributions.
> 
> Thank you in advance
> 
> Thomas Philips

-- 
David C. Ullrich