The early days
When I first heard about Python, it was just after the 2.5 release. I heard that one of my customer was using it but I had never seen a line of Python yet. At some point in a project, I needed a Bash script equivalent on Windows, and decided to give Python a try, instead of using Windows BAT files.
I installed it on my workstation, and started reading the (excellent) documentation about the tasks I needed to do.
I’ve used IDLE at first, because, well, it’s shipped with the Windows Python distribution. It has been a very unpleasant experience I must say (although I have learned to appreciate some features IDLE has that are missing in other editors). TKinter is a summary toolkit, the look and feel makes it look like it was written in the 80’s (in fact, it probably was). The main concept of editor/runner mix-in felt also a bit weird at first. I finally returned to my all-time-favorite editor, Notepad++, and ran my scripts from the command line.
Eclipse and Pydev
Later, I (luckily) landed on a new project, and it included a lot of Python. The team in place was using an editor they were not yet familiar with, but hopefully, I already knew quite well: Eclipse. I must say the Pydev extension for Eclipse is one of the greatest blessing you can get when working with Python. It features a lot of interesting features from IDLE:
- syntax highlighting
- code completion
- real-time code inspection (very useful when using a dynamic language)
- PyLint integration (once you’ve tasted it, you can never work without anymore)
- smart indentations (you almost don’t have to worry about your indents)
- unittest integration (although I’ve stopped using it)
Eclipse is an excellent product on its own, I already used it for PHP development for several years and I was happy it was also my customer choice for Python.
However, there was still some occasions Eclipse was not the right tool to use:
- the integrated console implements the basic shell only
- executing scripts outside the project path is hard, as well as changing the current directory
- for 10 line scripts, creating a project is a bit overkill
The revelation: IPython
After a couple of months struggling with Eclipse and Notepad++ & python.exe, I discovered IPython and at last found a way to work on small scripts without the overhead of Eclipse, but with all its interesting features:
- serves as well as a shell replacement as Python interpreter
- excellent autocompletion (both for paths and Python code)
- “magic” functions such as bookmarks, list of currently defined variables (“whos” command)
- PDB (Python Debugger) integration with IPDB, providing code completion and history to PDB
- post-mortem debugger (“debug” command after a traceback)
- quick access to docstrings and source code of almost every library
IPython is packaged inside the Python(x,y) distribution with the Console application, which is a kind of command line emulator for Windows. Once configured with a readable setup, it’s probably the best development environment you can find of on Windows.
