Python development tools

[Reed Xia]

在 2013å¹´6月24日星期一UTC+8上åˆ4æ—¶40分07秒，cutems93写é“：

Hello,



I am new to python development and I want to know what kinds of tools people use for python development. I went to Python website and found several tools.



1. Automated Refactoring Tools

2. Bug Tracking

3. Configuration And BuildTools

4. Distribution Utilities

5. Documentation Tools

6. Integrated Development Environments

7. Python Debuggers

8. Python Editors

9. Python Shells

10. Test Software

11. Useful Modules

12. Version Control



What else do I need? Also, which software is used in daily base? I know version control software and bug tracking software are used almost everyday by developers. Which software is used less often?



Also, I will use GUI interface for Python. What kind of widget toolkits do you recommend? I know there are GTK+ and Qt.



Thank you in advance!

-Min S.-

It's a big question.

 

[rusi]

That essay constrasts “scripting†versus “system programmingâ€, a useful
(though terminologically confusing) distinction.

It's a mistake to think that essay contrasts “scripting“ versus
“programmingâ€. But the essay never justifies its aversionto
“programming†as a term for what it's describing, so thatmistake is
easy to make.

The essay is 15 years old. So a bit dated. Referred to it as it conveys thesense/philosophy of scripting.

I'm saying that “scripting†is a complete subset of “programmingâ€, so
it's nonsense to talk about “the scripting-to-programming spectrumâ€.

Scripting is, always, programming. Scripts are, always, programs. (But
not vice-versa; I do acknowledge there is more to programming than
scripting.) I say this because anything anyone has said to me about the
former is always something included already by the latter.

So I don't see much need for treating scripts as somehow distinct from
programs, or scripting as somehow distinct from programming. Whenever
you're doing the former, you're doing the latter by definition.

My personal associations with the word 'scripting'

- Cavalier attitude towards efficiency
- No interest (and maybe some scorn) towards over-engineering (hence OOP)
- Heavy use of regular expressions, also sophistication of the command-lineargs
- A sense (maybe vague) of being glue more than computation, eg. a bash script is almost certain to invoke something other than builtins alone and is more likely to invoke a non-bash script than a bash script. For a C program that likelihood is the other way round. For python it could be either

 

[MRAB]

The essay is 15 years old. So a bit dated. Referred to it as it conveys the sense/philosophy of scripting.


My personal associations with the word 'scripting'

- Cavalier attitude towards efficiency

And convenience for the programmer.

"""Manipulating long texts using variable-length strings? Yes, I know
it's inefficient, but it's still faster than doing it by hand!"""

- No interest (and maybe some scorn) towards over-engineering (hence OOP)
- Heavy use of regular expressions, also sophistication of the command-line args
- A sense (maybe vague) of being glue more than computation, eg. a bash script is almost certain to invoke something other than builtins alone and is more likely to invoke a non-bash script than a bash script. For a C program that likelihood is the other way round. For python it could be either

Automating tasks, e.g. controlling other applications and stringing
together tasks that you would otherwise be doing by hand.

 

[rusi]

And convenience for the programmer.

"""Manipulating long texts using variable-length strings? Yes, I know
it's inefficient, but it's still faster than doing it by hand!"""

Well... did not say it because it tends to be emotionally charged
C programmers find C convenient.
Haskell programmers find monads convenient
Python programmers are (increasingly) finding OOP convenient

Automating tasks, e.g. controlling other applications and stringing
together tasks that you would otherwise be doing by hand.

Yes scripting is more programmer oriented as against GUIs which are more user oriented.
Related: scripting is more FP-ish, whereas GUIs are more OOP-ish.
A shell pipeline is really function composition in different syntax and a back-quoted command is close to a higher-order function.
By contrast a windows user clicks on a 'doc' and it just 'opens'
Many of them dont exactly know the diff between a doc and MsWord.
And even a supposed programmer (like yours truly) has a hell of a time finding the executable when needed.

 

[Grant Edwards]

Automating tasks, e.g. controlling other applications and stringing
together tasks that you would otherwise be doing by hand.

That, IMO, is the definition of "scripting": writing a program to
automate a task that would probably be done by hand if you didn't have
to do it more that a few times.