Pem’s Tech Blog

In recent times, I’ve mostly used Visual Studio, for C++, and for C# .NET.  Plus, EditPad Pro as a simple text editor.  But I’ve also done plenty of Java (in college) and Python (right now).  For Python, I’ve just been using EditPad Pro.  But now I’d like to try an IDE for Python, and for Java too.  Python has a list here:
http://wiki.python.org/moin/IntegratedDevelopmentEnvironments

I mainly focused on the (IDEs with introspection-based code completion and integrated debugger) choices:
* NetBeans IDE: primarily for Java; Sun Microsystems owns NetBeans IDE, runs on Solaris too; also works with JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Groovy, C, C++, and Clojure
* Eclipse with PyDev: written primarily in Java; for developing with Java, and via plug-ins for other languages including: C, C++, COBOL, Python, Perl, PHP, and others; started by IBM but now more fully open source community
* WingIde: for python only, not free: $35 personal or $179 professional, for one developer on one OS; source assistant shows documentation in the IDE for code completion text
* Komodo: British company, closed source; not free – $295 for license
* others: IDLE written in python and looks weak, Spyder written in python and scientific, PyScripter is Windows only

Just based on that, my current top choices for Python are (NetBeans, Eclipse with PyDev, WingIde).  For NetBeans I did Tools -> Plugins -> Available Plugins -> Python (version 0.103 beta), then linked my new project to my python install, since by default it referenced Jython (right-click project –> properties –> Python –> Manage –> New).  For Eclipse, I went to Help –> Install New Software, pointed it to ( http://pydev.org/updates ).  For WingIde, I tried the professional version trial.

NetBeans code completion with Python, with doc:

Eclipse code completion with Python, with doc:

WingIde code completion with Python, with doc:

All three show some form of code completion with integrated dynamic documentation.  As seen in the above screen shots, it shows code completion and function comments for my pemTest1() and pemTest2() functions.

As seen in the above screen shots, both WingIde and Eclipse gave me function comments for my pemTest1() method that I wrote, via pressing ctrl+space.

For Java, looks like the top IDE choices are NetBeans or Eclipse (or IntelliJ IDEA, which costs $249 for a personal license).

Based on one review, it sounds like: Eclipse has more plugins vs. NeatBeans has more-and-simpler out of the box.

As of 2010/01/10, the NetBeans Python plugin is marked as beta version 0.103, and it referenced Jython 2.5.1.  Python 3.0 has been out for a while, and I was hoping this would run with Python (not Jython).

I noticed the latest Grammar Version choices for Python (with Eclipse PyDev) were 2.6 and 3.0, even though I have Python 3.1.1 installed.

Based on this very brief survey, it’s not obvious which one I’d like better in the long-run.  But even just for the ctrl+space code completion (with convenient function comments), this looks promising to use a real IDE, rather than just using a basic text editor.

Pem (Admin) :: 2010/01/10 (Sunday, January 10, 2010) :: Misc :: No Comments »

I’m adding a new category…  Probably what I should do is create a separate blog (or page / area) that is for software development (programming, computer science, graphics programming, game development, virtualization programming, code tools, application development, etc) related stuff.  In fact, probably what I should really do is just delete this blog and focus on development topics O:-).  But for the moment, I’ll just make this a new category: Software Development

Pem (Admin) :: 2010/01/10 (Sunday, January 10, 2010) :: Blogging, Misc :: No Comments »