Why your python editor sucks

I'm doing a reasonable amount of python-coding work these days. It would help me to have an editor that doesn't suck. My requirements are:

1. Small & Fast. I'm not after a massive clunky IDE, just an editor with enough smarts to make editing multiple python files easier.
2. Sensible syntax highlighting.
3. Understands python indentation, PEP8 style. Specifically, indents with 4 spaces, backspace key can be used to unindent.
4. Can be integrated with one or more lint checkers. Right now I use a wonderful combination of pep8, pyflakes and pylint. I want the output of these to be integrated with the editor so I can jump to the file & line where the problem exists.

That's it. I don't think I'm asking too much. Here's the editors I've tried, and why they suck:

1. KATE. I love kate, it's my default text editor for almost everything. However, there is no way to integrate lint checkers. I could write a plugin, but that's yet another distraction from actually doing my work.
2. Vim. I'm already reasonably skilled with vim, and Alain Lafon's blog post contains some great tips to make vim even better. My problem with vim is simply that it's too cryptic. Sure, I could spend a few years polishing my vim skills, but I want it to just work. Vim goes in the "kind of cool, but too cryptic" basket.
3. Eric. When you launch eric for the first time it opens the configuration dialog box. It looks like this:
   How many options do I really need for an editor? Over-stuffed options dialogs is the first sign of trouble. It gets worse however, once you dismiss the settings window, the editor looks like this:
   
   Need I say more?
4. Geany. Looks promising, but no integration into lint checkers.
5. pida. Integrates with vim or emacs for the editor component. Looks promising, although the user interface is slightly clunky in places. Pida suffers from exactly the same problems as vim does however, but I may end up using it.

There are a few options I have not tried, and probably won't:

1. Eclipse & pydev. Eclipse is a huge, hulking beast. I want a small, fast, lean editor, not an IDE.
2. Emacs. Can't be bothered learning another editor. Doesn't look that much different to vim, so what's the point in learning both?
3. KDevelop. Same reason as Eclipse, above.

I suspect there's a market for a simple python editor that just works. Please! Someone build it!

On C++ programming IDEs

I've been doing a bit of programming work under Linux for the last few days, and I'm very disappointed with the selection of integrated development environments on offer. Read on for my complaints.

First though, a bit of history. I usually write code under Windows for my job. I use Microsoft's visual studio 6. For those of you who haven't tried it, compiling code with the VS6 C++ compiler is a bit like pulling teeth. For example, Microsoft thinks that the following is perfectly valid code:

for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++);
printf("After loop, i = %d", i);

However, The scope of the variable "i" is limited to the contents of the for loop (in this case it's en empty loop), and so shouldn't be available to the printf line. This becomes even more painful when you want multiple for loops within a function, and you want to be able to use the "i" variable for each loop. Under windows, you can do this:

for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
// do something
}


for (i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
// do something else
}

Note that I don't need to re-declare "i" in the second loop, since it already exists? If you try and compile this code under a compiler that observes the C++ standard, you'll get compilation errors. So, how do you turn this into cross-compiler code? AFAIK the only way is to use a second variable inside the second for loop, OR to wrap each for loop in it's own additional scope block, like this:

{
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
// do something
}
}

{
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
// do something else
}
}

However, I digress from the true subject of this post. For all it's compiler digressions, the user interface actually isn't that bad. Sure, the toolbars seem to move to random positions on your screen every time you debug a project. Sure, you can't use it on a second screen because all the tooltips draw themselves on the first screen, and yes, if you want decent code completion you need to use a plugin like visual assist X, and no, there's no code folding either. But apart from all that, the UI is just right. It's not overcomplicated, it's easy to use.... simple!


So, let's look at KDevelop, KDE development environment. I have several problems with it:

1. Code completion requires the user to jump through waaaay too many hoops. As far as I'm concerned it should be turned on by default, or, if that ruffles too many feathers, have one checkbox to turn it on. I shouldn't have to root around in the KDevelop settings, and project settings, add the library include directories I want to use for the project, exit KDevelop, install ctags, re-load project, tweak settings, and then find that code completion is actually not that brilliant.
2. The User interface is way too cluttered. Many of the menus are so full of entries that they cascade off the bottom of my screen. There are so many toolbars and sidebars that I can barely see my work. Many of the sidebars don't even work properly! The documentation sidebar seems particularly useless. I could probably find out what I have to do to get it going, but my point is that it should work out of the box! When I fire up KDevelop, I want to write some code, not mess about with the environment.

The best development environment should be completely transparent to the programmer. OK, so none of the IDEs I've used to date achieve this, but a man can dream, right?


In the mean time, I'm going back to my old IDE: Kate, with the scons build system, activated from the console, and gdb as a debugger. What more could you want?