Blog

9 May

Written by on .

Now that I've chosen a language for this project (Python), I have been investigating many different Python IDEs (Integrated Development Environment). I had no idea how many different IDEs existed, and I have downloaded every one (that I could find) and tried them out. The only 2 which I liked were Eric Python IDE and the Eclipse Europa IDE combined with the PyDEV plug-in. Having used Microsoft Visual Studio for many, many years, I found that the Eclipse Europa IDE was the most refined and professional, even more so that Visual Studio (in many ways).

Some of the highlights:

  • Great layout / tabbed interface
  • Good project / file organization
  • Responsive intellisense / code completion
  • Code templates
  • Code collapsing (which is great)
  • A nice integrated debugger
(Screenshot of Eclipse IDE - just imagine Python code instead of Java and you'll get an idea of what it's like from this picture)