[Pythonmac-SIG] Mac User Python Newbies

[Brendan Simons]

The IDE thread is a recurring one.  Here's my experience as another 
Python newbie.  I tried SPE, PythonCard, PyOxice, PyPE, eclipse and 
wing (under x11).  All work, but I found that each one had enough 
quirks (mostly UI inconsistencies, but some are downright unstable)  
that I was less productive than without.   Not to sell any short, I'm 
sure they will get better given time.

FWIW, the winning formula for me right now is:

1) Editor:  TextWrangler (http://www.barebones.com/index.shtml).
  -Free, "Made For Mac", Code Colouring,  Method Indexing, The ability 
to run scripts from the editor, More text manipulation options than I 
can count.

2) GuiEditor:  XRCed.py (comes with the wxPython install package).  (Or 
code the wxPython by hand, which takes longer, but gives you a little 
more control over the result).

3) And an instance of terminal running python interactive mode.  
Actually, this is the most valuable Python tool I've found so far - 
it's like a scratch pad where I can quickly check assumptions, or test 
out ideas.

The only thing I'm missing now is a debugger with breakpoints, call 
stack, and variable watches.  I'll have to settle for random print 
statements for now.

-Brendan

On 8-Feb-05, at 11:06 PM, pythonmac-sig-request at python.org wrote:

>
> If you try SPE, I'd be very interested to hear your results. It's 
> beautiful, and very extensive. But I have not been able to make it 
> work. (The same has been true for me with wxGlade. It may be my fault, 
> or the fault of my system.)