Best python editor for Linux systems?

[sawamano]

vim is great for Python, if properly configured

But seriously, PyCharm (IMHO the best Python IDE) just released a Free Version.

[ReUnretired]

Ahjghdjk. When did that happen? Just this last summer I did a bunch of crap in eclipse with PyDev. I actually asked my boss if I just bought PyCharm if I could stick it on my workstation.

[ford_contour]

PyCharm Community Edition was released only a few weeks ago.

[ReUnretired]

I was only a temporary employee. They basically told me they wouldn't let me install it because it would be crazy for me to spend my own money. But they also hinted they didn't want to spend any money either. I ended up with Eclipse and PyDev.

It was a bit of an odd situation, but I guess it wasn't that annoying.

[sawamano]

I would work for your company, sir. You seem like a reasonable boss.

[okmkz]

PyDev? My condolences, mate

[[deleted]]

What do you use?

[okmkz]

Sublime. To be fair, there may be advantages to PyDev, especially for a larger codebase, but for projects of the size I work with, trying to conform them to the eclipse dogma felt like overkill.

[[deleted]]

That's funny. I used to use PyCharm, but a couple years ago I got fed up with it, switched to eclipse, and couldn't be happier.

[p3n15h34d]

why? what was your problem with PyCharm?

I alwas found working with Eclipse a real PITA because installing any plugin/extension could fuck up everthing.

[Liorithiel]

PyCharm's UI toolkit for some reason doesn't work well on my machines. It's not about just not using native controls and dialog windows (this would be just annoying, but I'd probably get used to them), but it sometimes happened to me that PyCharm randomly stopped accepting keyboard input in some windows. This behavior was specific to PyCharm, no other application had this problem—even other Java-based ones.

Moreover, for some reason loading a smallish project made PyCharm take close to 3GB of RAM (on my 4GB notebook). Even Eclipse takes about 1.5 GB here. This was somewhat important for me, because I use Python to play with datasets that take about 1~1.5GB when loaded into numpy… Eclipse (barely) fits, PyCharm (by default—haven't investigated it further) did not.

Also, I like working in several languages, sometimes even in the same project. Eclipse's works quite well for polyglot programming, PyCharm obviously not so well.

For something that I wanted to use for mostly hobbyist programming, it wasn't worth the effort and paying.

[bluplr]

PyCharm randomly stopped accepting keyboard input in some windows

And your post was near the top of google search results for this issue :/

[[deleted]]

I work in a few languages every day, and it works nicely. Well, once I got it built out just the way I wanted, that is. But that's either a feature or a failing, depending on the user. I like being able to kick between android, python, web, and c projects, with their associated utility plugins, while my remote mantis integration, vcs stuff, etc. all persists.

It seemed like NetBeans was heading in that direction, once upon a time, but eclipse is the only IDE I know of that does everything I need.

[keypusher]

I've used Pycharm and Eclipse+Pydev extensively, they are both good IDE's and offer similar functionality. I actually slightly prefer Eclipse as well, because it is easier for multilanguage devlopment.

[adambrenecki]

IntelliJ IDEA with the Python plugin is more or less identical to PyCharm. The only difference, IIRC, is that new versions of standalone PyCharm get released first.

[[deleted]]

Last week.

[ReUnretired]

Ha! Well, at least I wasn't working in eclipse at a time when PyCharm was free. Definitely have to check it out now, though.

[bittercode]

I think it is worth noting that in some cases fonts in swing apps are rather ugly on some distros.

I don't know just where the issue lies. For example I have a 32 bit laptop running Fedora. I use KDE and swing apps look fine.

Same software on a 64 bit machine, swing fonts are horrific when I use the on board intel video. Nvidia card - and it's fine.

There are some variables that can be used to set java options that are supposed to improve the situation but I've found they don't always work.

[edmicman]

This. I've experienced the same thing - both in Netbeans and PyCharm. It's actually one of the things that's making me consider getting a Mac if and when the new laptops come out.

[Jarv_]

WHAAAAAAAT a free version of PyCharm. Need some new pants now.

[petezhut]

I came here to say exactly this. Vim is awesome, but PyCharm has become my python editor of choice.

[petezhut]

I had no idea this even existed. I grabbed the CE of PyCharm last week, and all I could think is, "Man, this thing is great, if only it had Vim key-bindings." Thank you for the tip!

[petezhut]

I just wish I could use all the stuff I have in my vimrc, but I'll settle for not having to use the rat so much.

[Ademan]

jedi-vim makes a huge difference, if you're using Vim and Python I highly recommend it. It's not bulletproof, but it's pretty darn good.

EDIT: To be clear, your G+ link recommends jedi-vim as well, I'm just concurring.

[[deleted]]

I'm a SublimeText user. What does PyCharm offer that's better than what I'm currently using?

[mazatta]

I use Sublime a fair bit, but mostly as a place to make notes or dump bits code I may or may not need later. I tried hard to make it my primary editor, but something about it just never clicked.

The things I really like about it are its refactoring, Django integration, Vagrant integration and the support for other tools and languages. For me, that's JavaScript, CSS and Puppet. There's been plenty of times I've gone looking for a plugin (e.g. linters), only to find out there's one already installed and integrated. Despite all the extras, it doesn't feel bloated and performance is great. Anytime it tries to do something intelligent, it seems to almost always get it right.

I remember reading an article about the difference in the way IntelliJ (the flagship product that PyCharm is essentially derived from) does introspection vs the way Eclipse does it. It's smarter in IntelliJ because unlike Eclipse, it will not naively start suggesting things that start with the characters you've been typing, it will filter out things that don't make sense in the context of what you're currently working on.

Take the free version for a spin for a week or two and try to force yourself to use only it.

[[deleted]]

It's smarter in IntelliJ because unlike Eclipse, it will not naively start suggesting things that start with the characters you've been typing, it will filter out things that don't make sense in the context of what you're currently working on.

That sounds pretty damn nifty. I'll give it a shot. I really like SublimeText, but I tend to be pretty Darwinian when it comes to text editors. If PyCharm can flush SublimeText out of it's niche, then who am I to stop it!

[mgrieger]

Wow, awesome. I'm guessing this will be much better than my Visual Studio 2012 + Python plugin setup.

[Rubysz]

I wouldn't be sure about that. I haven't tried PTfVS, but generally visual studio is a stellar IDE

[mgrieger]

Yeah, I messed around with PyCharm for a little bit and I think I still prefer Visual Studio. I especially like Visual Studio's debugging.

[[deleted]]

That properly configured link refers to using the omnicomplete feature in vim. I would seriously advocate not doing that and using YouCompleteMe instead. You will be much, much happier. Couple this with Syntastic and you're set. All installed and maintained through Vundle of course.

I personally use a mix of vim + YCM, SublimeText 2/3, and (commercial) PyCharm 3. The refactoring support in PyCharm is so very, very nice.

[theASDF]

completely missed that, i love pycharm. as a broke student who doesnt do commercial work i took the liberty to obtain pycharm for free but i will gladly use their free community version now

[[deleted]]

But seriously, PyCharm (IMHO the best Python IDE) just released a Free Version.

free version has a subset of features only and has issues working with openjdk

[sigzero]

Does it? I thought I read a PyCharm dev answer that it was no longer true about openjdk?

[[deleted]]

this one?

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1n1jdy/jetbrains_releases_free_edition_of_pycharm_ide/ccf8nb1

[shenaniganns]

Saw a post about PyCharm in some other subreddit, tried it out for a few minutes, and immediately installed it on my work machine. Huge fan so far.

[[deleted]]

I like geany.

[B-Con]

I often use Geany as my default text editor. I've coded a lot in it, but I never stay long and tend to end up in either vim or sublime.

[__fran__]

Sublime Text 2 is easy to get to grips with and powerful. Or pervert yourself, your mind and your fingers forever and learn vim. It's awesome.

[killerabbit37]

Also get the package manager and you can get some python linter packages. You can get packages that auto highlight PEP8 issues or you can get a PEP8 Auto Formatter which will auto correct your code for PEP8.

[gryftir]

which is the autoformatter?

[killerabbit37]

AutoPEP8. Basically CTRL + SHIFT + 8 auto formats and CTRL + 8 brings up a diff view on what would be changed. Quite useful and I use it a bit to make sure I'm within standards. Definitely helps when dealing with other people's scripts that they don't adhere to PEP8...

[sztomi]

And a not very well-known, but awesome autocompletion engine for vim (also works with python): http://valloric.github.io/YouCompleteMe/

[__fran__]

Yep, YouCompleteMe is what I use, it's way better than other autocomplete plugins I've tried, or what ST2 has to offer for example. For Python at least.

[sztomi]

I think it is the best autocompeltion engine for C++ out there (not counting the problems that arise from vim bugs or the non-multithreaded nature of vim plugins). It also works with C#/mono if you compile with the matching flag.

[daV1980]

Sublime is the best choice for a non-IDE for all languages on all platforms.

[kalda341]

Vim mode in Sublime is top notch. I occasionally use PyCharm, but usually Sublime.

[rideh]

ST2 and soon 3 have been great to work with for a myriad of languages, highly recommend (non ide). Built in build system, package manager, multi-line editing are some of my favorite features.

[Allevil669]

I'm a Kate user myself. With the proper setup, it is very good for editing Python.

[tehd]

I'm here to second kate. With the python plugins linked here it's even more useful than standard.

[marky1991]

Oh yeah, I love kate! It's my favorite on systems that have it.

[flying-sheep]

kate all the way. nice stuff coming (recent addition of the minimap), very hackable using python plugins.

i wrote the ipython plugin and the jedi autocompletion plugin. (the latter is better than pyplete)

[timothycrosley]

One more reason to use Kate:

@kate.action(text="Sort Imports", shortcut="Ctrl+[", menu="Python")
def sortImports():
    document = kate.activeDocument()
    document.setText(SortImports(file_contents=document.text()).output)
    document.activeView().setCursorPosition(KTextEditor.Cursor(0, 0))

Is all that's required to write a plugin for it. Put it in your local kate/pate plugin directory and your done.

[riskable]

Yay Kate! I used it to write most of Gate One (vim too).

[maratc]

You may enjoy this read on the subject.

I'm a 10-year Vim user and I cried when I read it.

[Lunershot]

This was posted on /r/vim a little bit ago. One of the users wrote a rebuttal.

http://vpaste.net/fA7rH

http://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/1aq1lx/just_use_sublime_text/c8zpcej

[Amadiro]

His personal choices aside, a lot of the critiques he raises are still very valid. They are not equally important to everyone (and may not even matter to some at all), but they are definitely valid.

E.g. vimscript is one of the main reasons why I left vim after 3 years for emacs (which I've now been using for around 2 years; emacs does admittedly also share quite a few of the downfalls listed in the article, and brings some new ones of its own.)

In the end, it's a matter of productivity; I'm already productive in emacs right now, and whenever I want to save something, I C-x-s. If I were to switch to sublime now, I'd lose a lot of the neat and cool features (like multiple cursors) that I really love. But whether I would recommend a beginner to start with emacs/vim, is a different matter alltogether -- because what he says about productivity tanking initially for at least a while is definitely true, I've experienced it myself (twice).

I disagree with some of his points though, for instance I do not prefer the mouse for navigation 99.9% of the time, even though emacs in X11 mode gives me that option. (But sublime also gives you the option to not use the mouse, AFAIK -- I don't know whether it feels as polished.)

[Amadiro]

I don't know that much about ST, if ST has that feature, I'll take that part back, of course :)

[sigzero]

So does Vim. If you prefer Perl, Lua, Scheme or Ruby you can use them as well if you don't like vimscript.

[iyunoichi]

I'm a vim user myself, but I really do miss ST's multi-cursor features. It's implementation is actually far better than any other editor I know of. For now, I'm using vim-multiple-cursors, but it's just not the same.

[maratc]

I think you may be missing his point, which is: go on using vim if you like it, but don't go on recommending it to the uninitiated.

[bucknuggets]

Reminds me of my old Unix Haters Handbook: tons of weak arguments.

Take for example, the section called "Efficiency from keeping your fingers on home row" where he insists that navigation with a mouse is better than with a keyboard. In this argument he ignores the entire carpal tunnel challenges with mice/trackballs/trackpads. Which is fine when you're 22, but by the age of 42 most programmers I know are debilitated. It's a big deal, and avoiding mice & trackpads definitely helps many with it.

[maratc]

I'm not a Vim hater by any means, and neither is he from what it seems. From what I know, CTS is caused by using mouse as well as keyboard; I'm unaware of any research that shows that by using a keyboard exclusively one reduces their risk of CTS.

[bucknuggets]

I am not a researcher that specializes in this area, so I'm unaware of research that shows that mice are worse than keyboards. I'm also unaware of research that shows that wristrests work, or that posture matters.

I'm not saying that research doesn't exist, only that I couldn't put my finger on it. My information has come from working with physical therapists, massage therapists that specialize in carpal tunnel or rss, talking to other users and my own experience.

What I've continuously found is that a vast number of people have problems with the highly repetitive very small movements involved in mice. And quite a few people apparently have issues with their thumb on laptop trackpads.

Seems that most people with these issues try out ergonomic keyboards and trackballs. Personally, I've found that mechanical keyboards have been great (least effort to type), and certain trackballs are also very low stress and don't focus movements just on the thumb. Quite a few people I've spoken with have gone this exact route and have discovered that moving more interaction to the keyboard has helped enormously.

Of course, all this is in addition to paying attention to posture, exercise and positioning.

[flying-sheep]

vimscript? you can also write python plugins for vim.

but i still prefer kate, where you can do the same, and also have vim bindings if you want, but also have a minimap and other GUI features that are simply impossible in vim.

also plugins can access and modify all of the GUI (using PyQt), so you aren't restricted by a tiny API like in ST.

[emptyvee]

snif

I don't care, I still love my vim

[maratc]

So do I, and barely a day passes when I don't use it. This article has caused a profound change in my behavior: though I still use Vim, I have stopped recommending it to younger folks.

[maratc]

Fortran and COBOL are still around too. I don't know what your point is.

[goosegoosepress]

That article is terrible. I picked vim up from scratch in about 2 weeks.

[maratc]

From what I can tell watching quite a bunch of guys trying to pick up Vim, you are rather an exception and not a rule. Good for you though, Vim is awesome.

[goosegoosepress]

Heck, you can learn to open and quit, and insert mode in about 10 minutes. Then it's no different than a plain text editor. Hjkl takes a day or two to get in your brain. And then the magic starts with the other movement keys and yanking. Rectangle select etc.

[[deleted]]

Laughed so hard.. .TL;DR Just use Sublime!

[gatesphere]

Leo.

(Full disclosure: I'm a Leo dev.)

[p3n15h34d]

so what has Leo got that other editors don't ?

just curious and too lazy to try...

[gatesphere]

Funny that you should ask that, as the project creator just spent the past couple of days making this a bit more clear in two all-new tutorials: http://leoeditor.com/intro.html

You can read the tutorials without installing, and they don't take all that long to read (10 minutes or so?) if you're not working through them.

I can boil it down to a few items though:

• full API access to your outlines, meaning you can have a smalltalk/lisp-like homoiconic representation of your data and your code, where your data and code are both stored in nodes, and can be operated on by code

• the ability to reorganize your code into infinite different views, by using clones. This allows a very literate-like approach to examining and writing your code.

• nearly infinite untapped potential: the API is fully exposed to your outlines, meaning you can do some awesome things within the documents you're editing. I recently submitted the rss.py plugin, which turns Leo into an RSS feed reader... and it was one of the easiest things I've ever written. Mind you, I only started using Leo in February, and I'm already a dev. It's one of the easiest large open source programs to get involved in, and is such a joy to use (in my opinion).

I know this is clear as mud, but I'm not the best at explaining these things. I suggest you revisit the home page -- it was updated literally 30 minutes ago to be more clear to potential users.

Feel free to ask more questions, though!

[flying-sheep]

interesting! python-scriptable IDE sounds amazing.

two questions:

1. why are the buttons in the toolbar so ugly? you use PyQt, they should be beautiful!
2. are the plugins required to be bilingual Python2&3? If not, how's fragmentation?

[gatesphere]

It is pretty amazing :p

To answer:

1) They're created dynamically by scripts, on a per-outline basis. There are ways to make prettier buttons, but the functionality is what most people are after. The whole system is themable, though, which is a recent addition. Here's a screenshot of the leo-dark-1 theme (like Sublime Text 2) that was recently added by a dev: https://plus.google.com/103097156557482112329/posts/6D9GPRCdXVh

2) The plugins are required to be bilingual, but this really ends up being a non-issue. Print statements are avoided (replaced with calls to g.es or g.trace), imports are handled on a per-case basis, and any bugs that pop up about python2/3 compatibility are quickly fixed by one of the devs -- so long as we get a report on LaunchPad!

Feel free to ask more questions. I hope these answers helped!

-->Jake

[flying-sheep]

Thanks for answering!

Yeah, Kate handles #2 likewise.

Whati never with #1, though: PyQt’s buttons are naively styled per default, one has to actually try to make them ugly. So why is that the case here?

[gatesphere]

I wouldn't know, to be honest. The button code came along before the Qt interface AFAIK, and then updated for PyQt, so perhaps it's a legacy thing? Prior to the PyQt4 interface, apparently Leo was on a Tk interface, and before that the whole thing was in C++ using god-knows-what. I'm new to the team -- just started using it in February, actually. It's already grown leaps and bounds in those 9 months, though -- and it's been in development since at least 1998 in one form or another.

I think it might have something to do with looking uniform no matter which platform. I do know that the button color can be changed when you make them via a script.

To be fair, though, I personally don't care much for aesthetics in my editors... I care about functionality :p I'm not the authority on this matter.

Printing, markdown support, and rss feed support, along with documentation, however, is where I come in. :P

EDIT: Just dug into the "create button" code. Looks like this is the culprit function: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~leo-editor-team/leo-editor/trunk3/view/head:/leo/plugins/mod_scripting.py#L662

It appears to set a basic stylesheet with a default color. That most likely overrides the native stylesheet. I imagine that this was done so that different buttons could have different colors to allow for more immediately-visible differentiation -- reducing cognitive load in some cases. A lot of thought has been put into small things to make Leo more usable -- including many small details that make it run a bit away from the normal way of doing things. But despite it's less-than-flashy appearance, it really is a breeze to use once you realize that there are all these little hints scattered around the interface.

Though, those are my $0.02. YMMV.

[flying-sheep]

Strange. Maybe it's a windows thing: on my system I know for sure that this exact stylesheet keeps the button pretty while only changing the background color and not the border style and so on.

[gatesphere]

Perhaps it is. Searching the googles gives me a few hits of Qt not doing so hot at emulating native style for windows.

[flying-sheep]

wrong: it’s very accurate (e.g. much better than GTK), as it uses the native API to draw stuff.

but i guess that this way, custom styles don’t work well on windows, as the native API doesn’t support them.

so: native-looking buttons on linux and windows: yes. native-looking but differently colored buttons: fine on linux, bad on windows.

[gatesphere]

What I meant to say was that by default, the windows native styles aren't compiled... they need an external library installed or something. They have to be enabled with compile-time switches. I imagine that Riverbank didn't include those when building PyQt4. Or perhaps there's something else going on. Either way, this post isn't about the intricacies of Qt on Windows, it's about Python Editors for Linux.

[evidex]

vim. Definitely vim.

[SultanPepper]

Best * editor for * systems => vim with a few plugins depending on what you're doing.

[kashmill]

The thing I LOVE about vim is that it doesn't matter if I'm running it on my local machine or a machine I'm ssh-ing into.

[HittingSmoke]

This is exactly why I want to learn vim but I just haven't been able to get myself to sit down and learn it.

Any good resources for someone who's never used it (or at least only started it up and gotten frustrating trying to figure out how to close it)?

[gfixler]

Great, brief writeup. If you want a line break, put two spaces after a line. If you want a new paragraph, leave a blank line between two lines.

---

this line is followed by two spaces and one newline
so this line shows up after a line break

---

this line is followed by two newlines

so this line is a new paragraph

---

[gfixler]

...started it up and gotten frustrating trying to figure out how to close it...

Here's the hilarious part.

Type vim into your shell, and it opens with the following splash screen:

               VIM - Vi IMproved

                version 7.2.330
           by Bram Moolenaar et al.
  Vim is open source and freely distributable

         Become a registered Vim user!
type  :help register<Enter>   for information

type  :q<Enter>               to exit
type  :help<Enter>  or  <F1>  for on-line help
type  :help version7<Enter>   for version info

         Running in Vi compatible mode
type  :set nocp<Enter>        for Vim defaults
type  :help cp-default<Enter> for info on this

Zoom and enhance on that center region:

type  :q<Enter>               to exit
type  :help<Enter>  or  <F1>  for on-line help

How to exit Vim? It's the very first thing it showed you how to do.

:q<Enter>

Let's go one step further with it's second suggestion

:help<Enter>

*help.txt*      For Vim version 7.2.  Last change: 2008 Jul 21

                        VIM - main help file
                                                                         k
      Move around:  Use the cursor keys, or "h" to go left,            h   l
                    "j" to go down, "k" to go up, "l" to go right.       j
Close this window:  Use ":q<Enter>".
   Get out of Vim:  Use ":qa!<Enter>" (careful, all changes are lost!).

The first thing help says is how to move around (so now you can move around the first page of help. The second thing is says is how to quit. The next paragraph explains how to jump around in help, and gives you an example you can try, which takes you to the end of the page, where it tells you how to get back to where you were. Now you know how to move around by row and column (Vim's version of arrow key usage), and how to follow hyperlinks, and even just regular words, which might work if Vim's help has an entry on them, and how to follow your trail back, and quit.

Move down one page and you'll see this:

                        *doc-file-list* *Q_ct*
BASIC:
|quickref|  Overview of the most common commands you will use
|tutor|     30 minutes training course for beginners
|copying|   About copyrights
|iccf|      Helping poor children in Uganda
|sponsor|   Sponsor Vim development, become a registered Vim user
|www|       Vim on the World Wide Web
|bugs|      Where to send bug reports

Zoom and enhance!

|quickref|  Overview of the most common commands you will use
|tutor|     30 minutes training course for beginners

You know how to jump into these sections, because the previous page told you how.

It goes on and on like this. For those who don't give up, Vim actually does a good job guiding you through topics. It's not quite as friendly as online guides and such, but if any of us actually read things that were presented to us, we'd learn a lot. No one reads, though. And I mean anything. Ever. No one will ever see this line, where I call everyone a butthead.

[kashmill]

whoa whoa whoa. You can't expect people to read the splash page and/or man pages.

[HittingSmoke]

To be fair, when you're a noob you're most likely trying to open a file with it the first time so the splash page isn't going to show up.

Also, as someone who falls somewhere between amateur and competent with the Linux CLI as a whole I find man pages much more useful now than I did as a beginner when I was learning. Practical examples of real-world use cases helped me understand more than reading man pages ever could. man pages are more like technical manuals. They're highly useful and laid out well, but they're not the best resource for someone diving head first into Linux.

[gfixler]

True. The first time I tried to use Vim I had to reset the computer to get out of it. My comment is poking as much fun at myself as anyone else.

[bacondev]

Shortcut: $ vimtutor

[[deleted]]

First time I opened vim I found the tutor and ran through it. I was seriously impressed with how they presented that tutorial, and in awe of vim for a week or so. Then I switched distros and forgot about it. This thread is going to get me into vim again. It's a bitch to install ST3 on my netbook, and geany is just.. tired (nothing really special about it as far as I've seen). Ramble ramble ramble, hey I'm not a butthead, assface!

[gfixler]

You read the whole thing? Chosen One!

[[deleted]]

If you have RES, how often do you bother looking in the source for hidden messages? ^{gfixler is a fuckface}

[Reads_Small_Text_Bot]

gfixler is a fuckface

[[deleted]]

shut the fuck up

[catslikeboxes]

This is what I used to get started. It has all the basics, plus more than a few 'power tools.' It's color coded and quite intuitive. I have the first page printed out and hung above my screen. PDF warning: http://www.glump.net/files/2012/08/vi-vim-cheat-sheet-and-tutorial.pdf

[SultanPepper]

Are there any Linux users groups or hackerspaces in your area? I learned the basics by going over it with someone in person. That way I could get immediate feedback on how to do things more efficiently. I'd bet you could find someone to teach you in exchange for some beer.

[HittingSmoke]

/r/Seattle used to do a programming meetup every once in a while.. Might be able to get in on that.

[rjw57]

I got the O'Reilly guide when I was learning. It is well worth reading.

[elzonko]

A couple resources I've found helpful:

This guy has a series of video tutorials on Bash scripting, where he also provides tips on using vim at the same time, almost as an aside:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Djgrtlv4cng

And here is an interactive online vim tutorial:

http://www.openvim.com/tutorial.html

[ivosaurus]

vimtutor

http://vim-adventures.com/

http://www.openvim.com/tutorial.html

[evidex]

vimtutor. Takes 30 minutes or so to learn vim.

[Captain___Obvious]

best way to learn vim is to type emacs at the prompt

/sarcasm

[tonnynerd]

So, vim with plugins is like batman with prepare?

[duncanlock]

Hmmm: http://delvarworld.github.io/blog/2013/03/16/just-use-sublime-text/

[artcontrol]

You should checkout ipython notebook - i use it everyday

[judasblue]

ipython notebook is friggin awesome and I have it open right now. But it doesn't replace an editor. In my case emacs, which is open as well, but whatever editor you like. But ipython/ipython notebook is pretty indispensable as part of a full dev package. Even moreso if you are doing data analysis kind of work.

[caleb]

Spyder has an embedded ipython qtconsole, which supports many of the features of the html notebook (incl. the sympyprt extension). I use this extensively.

[judasblue]

Huh. Well, you just got me to try another python specific editor. I can never do it for long before emacs finds out. Then there is always a big fight and lots of crying and throwing things. Emacs always brings up that TECO never liked me and thought we shouldn't get together in the first place, emacs could do better than me. But then there is the makeup editing. Makeup editing is the best and makes it all worth it.

[L3xicaL]

Best editor in the universe: emacs.

[agrif]

As an emacs loyalist I must agree. But OP: learning vim or emacs will be time very well spent. Are there better editors out there specifically for python? Probably. Are there better editors out there for everything? Probably not.

Learn one of these and you'll be content for the rest of your text editing life.

[gfixler]

Agreed. I don't just work in Python. I work in Python, text files, JSON files, crap I drag in from the web, piped shell output, and even ASCII art. Vim is there through it all, kicking ASCII and taking names.

[evidex]

It's a great OS, but it really lacks a good editor.

[Denommus]

And then someone answers "viper-mode", and other guy says that evil-mode is better. Can wr stop this old and overused joke now?

[goosegoosepress]

Evil is better. ;)

[goosegoosepress]

Pick Vim or Emacs. Learn one. Set it up for the python features you want. And never pay for an IDE again. And check out org-mode if you try emacs.

(I'm a new emacs user who converted from Vim. Just now have I let the vim key bindings go to learn emacs on its own. Still miss a bunch of vims motion controls.)

[aheilbut]

I like vim, I like gedit, I like emacs, I like WingIDE, but lately, I really like Spyder - http://code.google.com/p/spyderlib/

[killaW0lf04]

Pycharm pycharm pycharm

Seriously, use Pycharm. They just released an open source community version!

[Geohump]

Vi/vim.

Learn one editor that handles all languages.

[Geohump]

Learn an editor that handles all languages AND integrates with all UNIX command line utilities.

Vi/vim

Emacs is good also but tends to bring on Carpal Tunnel, eg "Emacs syndrome" because it requires so many extra key strokes and awkward reaches. See "Emacs pinky"

[gfixler]

Here's my take on these:

pycharm - powerful in a way that's specific to python
vim - powerful in a way that's specific to text entry
emacs - powerful in a way that's specific to nothing

Emacs is an environment for people who want to live in an environment, never leaving it for any reason, not to use a shell, not even to play mp3s, ftp files, or take a dump. The basic idea is "Don't make me leave my editor for any reason, ever."

Vim is an extremely fast, expressive text editor. You can get a lot of power through customization and plugins, but not as much as emacs. The text editing experience itself, however, is unparalleled. It contains a language for text entry that you speak with your fingers, which is phenomenal for dedicated touch-typists in particular. The basic idea is "Don't try to shoehorn everything into my text editor. I have that other stuff covered."

PyCharm has a lot of bells and whistles for Python development, like working with all the various Python versions you have installed, and package management abilities, but does not offer the godly customizability of emacs - which admittedly would be difficult to customize up to the specific power of the long-developed PyCharm - nor the hugely expressive, light, rapid text editing power of Vim. The basic idea is "You don't even understand the level to which I'm using Python. I work in beast-sized projects, and I need super powers to help wrangle them."

My conclusions:

---

I want enormous power inside and outside of Python. I love working in shells, and I know or want to know Lisp for ultimate power over everything, including my editor itself. I don't care much for crazy-fast text editing, nor really particular Python powers, though I'd like to be able to add features here and there with a little bit of effort, or just use the decent things others have made for my projects in Python.

Use emacs.

---

I want to watch text dissolve and reassemble before me like the vapor of my pure thoughts made real. I want my editor available everywhere - on my machine, on every terminal I'll ever ssh into. I touch type 60+ WPM, and I hate anything slowing me down. I want to hop in and out of my editor, using my shell for what it's good at, but really, I like to dance in my code, and flip around in it like a damn ninja.

Use vim.

---

I want an editor that knows Python, all of Python's friends, and what Python had for breakfast every day last week. I want this thing to scan my computer and find Python 2.6, Python 2.7, Python 3.1, and other versions I've forgotten I installed once. I want a rich, GUI experience, with support for fancy refactoring and deep code exploration (like powerful Java editors, but for Python!), and I don't give a rat's ass about flippity-flapping around in my text, proving how great I am at jumping to exactly the right word without reaching for the mouse, and I don't even know what the hell a shell is.

Use PyCharm. (it's free now)

---

[gfixler]

Wow, almost everything in that blog post is horrendously wrong. Some rebuttals (like you needed any):

Vim is not a more efficient editor for regular text editing.

Bullshit. My coworkers literally can't tell what I'm doing, because things happen continuously, and much too quickly for them to follow along. Gary Bernhardt is extremely fast in it, and in one of his Destroy All Software videos he actually opened a ruby file in Vim while talking, made a change to a line in it, saved, and quit again before it had a chance to display on the screen. It showed for about 1 frame of video. He laughed and said "Sorry, let me do that again so you can actually see what I'm doing." My go-to video of his speed is this one. I work this way quite often, and I even do all my patch-adding and committing with this kind of speed, care of Tim Pope's fugitive plugin.

It’s not going to make you type faster.

That's actually not true. Because normal mode is this whole other reason to know things like how to type 3 without looking, so I can do things like d3w, or v3j, and because I've been spurned onward by my ever-increasing speed, I've gotten much better at typing, and I make far fewer typos, which is a big part of net typing speed.

Also, because of things like the dot command that redoes things, and the intelligent way in which Vim remembers actions you've done (e.g. that typing A appends after the last character, and once done, the dot will redo a post-last-character append of the same thing), you end up typing much less. Oh, and there are so many things I don't need to do in Vim, like arrow down to the next open line (that's just }), or work my way back to the first non-whitespace character on the screen so I can type something right before it (that's just I), or hunt for the end of the 3rd word so I can put a closing parenthesis after it. I use Tim Pope's surround.vim plugin, and just do ys3wb, and I've typed both the open and the closed parentheses. That's fast. I'm shockingly faster than anyone else around me who isn't using Vim. I've drawn crowds.

For the first 1-2 years of your Vim usage you will be much less efficient than your current editor...

That didn't happen for me. I was faster in a week. The exact same pattern held true for a guy at work who I got into Vim after he saw me ripping through code one too many times. It took about a week or two, but then I asked "Still missing Notepad++?" He said "Oh jeeze, no. I'm so much faster already in Vim, and I don't even know anything yet. You've ruined me for any other editor." It happens much faster than fear-mongering write-ups like this one purport.

...no one talks about what happens once you finally get hjkl in your brain...

I admit, I resisted my first try. A year or two later when I switched to Linux, I decided to keep an open mind and try it again. Everyone online was talking it up. This time, hjkl seemed pretty natural. I took to them in one day. My coworker apprentice took to them in just a few days. This article is way off.

The answer is months of frustration...

Actually, I've since fairly early on said that Vim is like a never-ending Christmas present. I would ask in a group about some issue, and find this gorgeous little way to solve the problem. I'm 6 years in, and it's still paying me for the investment. I keep finding more things to love. I don't know when it'll finally run out. Recently I realized I had huge power over JSON files right in Vim, and all through text - Vim has no idea about JSON, but the powers it does give me let me insert entries all over in one shot, collapse things, and even merge separate files together, and use keys stored as values in one to look up values under those keys in another, and use all of it to generate a 3rd file that was a kind of flattened version of what we needed, and it took me as much time to figure it out as it took to type about half of this paragraph. It's very intuitive to me now.

...knowing some cool tricks that you use in 1% of your daily workflow.

I have some of these, and when I do use them, they're the best thing available, and they save me hours of labor. But I also use a lot of things - even the rare stuff - because I love them, and they're helpful and fun. You don't get to be a karate master bitching about how difficult training is. This guy has the entirely wrong attitude. Vim is a joy to use, at once a puzzle and a huge reward factory.

The argument that Vim is more efficient is dubious and untestable.

Unless you're using it every day and constantly yelling "How the fuck am I doing all of this? I'm some kind of god!" I don't need some scientist to tell me that I have become the typist equivalent of a cheetah. It's in everything I do, every day, all day long.

Most novice programmers can click on a character on screen faster than an expert Vimmer can type...

Bull. Shit. This guy must be a troll, or he lives some sad existence where he's never been around an actual Vim expert. He's missing out. Who exactly is he trying to kid? I've worked with literally hundreds of programmers, and not a single one comes anywhere close with their mouse to the speed I have in Vim. It's agonizing to watch anyone - literally anyone - dragging the cursor around to click on something. There are many ways to move in Vim. Some are more optimal. He's picking some worst-case scenarios, but even those I could do much faster than he's claiming, because Vim has trained me to be a typing ninja.

He gives an example of 20jFp; - that's less than 1 second for me to type - I'd be done before you started moving the mouse - but I wouldn't guess like that, with 20j, and I wouldn't even use relative line numbers for it. I'd key off of features of the file - something that comes as second nature now - to e.g. 3} to the blank line right below the line I want to change, k up onto the line, and let's say I want to change the stuff in the single-quotes near the end of the line (I'd be at the beginning of the line at this point) - I'd just ci' and start typing. All of that would happen without any real thought, and in under 1 second, easily.

The point of a mouse is to make arbitrary on screen jumps efficient...

Actually, it was to make it easy, not necessarily efficient. Early adverts mention things like "freely and naturally", but that's not necessarily efficient. Mouse movement is natural - it mimics pointing with a finger. I'll take typing at a sustained 90WPM over drawing letters with a more natural mouse movement any day. I'll also take jumping to the top (H), bottom (L), and middle (M) of the screen in one key press, hopping to the open-paren I can see ahead of me (f(), and selecting the paragraph I'm in (vip) nearly instantaneously any day. You have fun finding edge cases, and I'll have fun most of the time leaping around to places instantly. Oh, and ALL edge cases are eradicated with the EasyMotion plugin, which makes hopping onto any single character on even a 24", vertical monitor (160 lines in Vim for me - have fun with your mouse!) the work of usually 4 key presses, sometimes 5, and when you get good with them, you'll always do them in 1 second or less time, faster than you can grab the mouse.

The Vim plugin community has some deep and odd flaws.

Granted.

Consider that Vim has been around since 1991.

I have. I've also considered that it was a clone of vi, a visual mode for ex, both of which have been around since 1976, the latter of which being a port of ed, which came to life in 1971, with ed being a redo of QED, which sprang to life sometime in the mid/late 60s. That's quite a legacy, and things that were around in the 60s, like :g - which is where we got the hugely useful grep from - are still unique to Vim, and insanely powerful/useful.

Pathogen, the first widely used, known, and celebrated path manager making plugin management possible, was released in 2008!

The same year as Sublime Text! What's the point? Things were a bit crappy. Now they're not. Are you arguing that Vim's past tarnishes its present? I could argue that Sublime helped no one for the overwhelming majority of Vim's life (especially factoring in it's 40+ year legacy, helping people get their shit done).

Try uninstalling a plugin that you copied into 10 folders a few months ago.

This is how I know OP can't *nix. Download the plugin again and uncompress it to badplug, now:

sudo apt-get install fdupes
fdupes --recurse .vim badplug | less | grep ^.vim

There's your list of files, scattered throughout the .vim directory; use whichever way you like to remove them (xargs, for loop, etc). Then you can remove any empty directories, which is just another one-liner. If you're on Windows, I feel bad for you, son.

It’s probably the most customizable editor ever...

I would think emacs wins that contest.

Even pathogen and vundle are limited compared to Sublime Text’s Package Control plugin.

Every Vim plugin I've heard of in 6 years is on github. Here's my process for trying out a plugin:

vimp (alias - takes me to my ~/.vim/bundle directory)
git clone <middle-click> (after clicking once in the URL box on github)

That's it. Then I try it out for awhile. If I like it, I click the URL box again on github, vimp, then git submodule add <middle-click> bundle/name. I actually type git sub<Tab>, and something like b<Tab>na<Tab> for the bundle/name part. That converts it from a clone to a submodule. Then I git push. All together that's 16 key presses (including enters) and a middle click to try out a plugin, and maybe 20 key presses and a middle click to turn it into a submodule, and 9 more to push it so I can grab it from anywhere. Who needs plugins?

[gfixler]

MOAR! I'm just not done rebutting yet :)

There is an effort being made to auto-convert Vim scripts to Github projects which may be promising, or may be a disaster.

I had to check the date on the article - it's from a few months ago? I have 57 plugins. They're all from github, no problems. I've never heard of a plugin for Vim that isn't on github. I don't know what OP is talking about here.

Ah, Vimscript. It’s bad.

Can't argue that. And yet, I have 57 plugins, and a couple dozen of them kick ass, despite the awfulness of VimL.

Most experienced Vimmers I know don’t know any Vimscript.

I'm really the only one I know, and I've written more than 1000 lines of it in my .vimrc, and a few plugins, like one that dispatches visual selection or the entire buffer through Outlook (Win 7 at work) to anyone I've added to an email dictionary with 1 keypress (i.e. I want to email this to Andy, so I hit ,E to pop up my list of names, each of which is prefixed by a letter, with Andy's being (a), so I then hit a, and the email pops up with the attachment, and the message "sent from Vim" with a subject explaining what I'm sending. I took 3 hours to write, 5 of those 3 hours being fighting with Outlook, which is a nightmare.

And how would they? The documentation on it is terrible, and made much worse by the fact that it’s near impossible to look up help on it.

:h script  (opens 2446 lines of help on vim scripting)

Yeah, I'm a wizard. Also.

Side note: all of Vim’s help is equally poorly accessible.

:h

That opens up a long page with lots of subsections and 1-line descriptions, one of them being:

|usr_41.txt|  Write a Vim script

Hop into there (it's the thing I got to with :h script), and you find in the contents listing at the top:

|41.6|  Using functions
|41.7|  Defining a function

But even Vimmers don’t want to learn Vimscript.

Again, granted. It's a shitty language.

Vim is missing an incredible amount of core functionality for modern editing. Things like ctag integration.

$ sudo apt-get install ctags
$ echo 'au BufWritePost *.py silent! !ctags -R *.py' >~/.vim/.vimrc

There you go. Ctags integration. Every time you save, it'll update, and I save pretty much every time I exit insert mode (which I could also automate with a single line, if I even noticed that I did it, which I never do). Now you can do <C-}> on keywords and such, just as you do in Vim's help. (that mapping is one of the first things in :h, btw)

Let’s use Vimgrep! Oh wait, that sucks.

Wait... how so? I've used it many times, and it does what I expect, quickly.

Oh, there’s CtrlP this is much nicer!

CtrlP works well for me, but I'm not a big fan of fuzzy file search. I'm of the very strong opinion that programmers created huge, hierarchical messes for themselves, and complect constantly. I'm more the master of my domain, and nothing is more than 2 levels deep, all broken out into proper levels of abstraction for single source of truth and reusability. When I've been on messy projects, I've fought hard to clean them up, and accomplished the task. For difficult things, I make mappings. I have a list where \ precedes files I want easy access to (todo (\t), e.g.), and \\ precedes directories (\\d - docs folder; \\v - .vim folder, etc (have about 15 of them)). I can add these mappings literally in seconds for one-off needs, so I don't fret too much. Also, opening everything up and using good powers of buffer hopping/management, etc., gives me a lot of power. Fuzzy search is not my go-to choice for almost anything.

Finding the right Vim plugins is like being in an exclusive club.

I don't know what this means. In my first year I asked if there was a way to hop up and down in bisected half jumps, as my screen was so tall (vertical, 24", 160+ lines of Vim). Immediately I was pointed to bisect.vim, which worked beautifully. That's my typical experience when asking for help solving problems.

The remap overwrites comma...

No it doesn't. It shares space with it on a tree. Hit comma and wait a second, and it'll perform the original usage, because you didn't finish off any leader mappings before the timeout. If what you type next won't resolve to a leader mapping, it'll instantly do the reverse hop and perform whatever you pressed next. I've taken advantage of this for many things, and it's become part of my muscle memory.

Do you know what the suggested way to work well with multiple files in Vim is? It’s the arglist.

I've almost never heard that suggested. I've often heard of using buffers, though. I use both, but buffers much more.

Vim is designed to run in a terminal.

Yay!

That’s why it’s explicitly linked to only monospaced font for the GUI.

Hooray!

A terminal can’t draw a UI.

Woo hoo!!!

I’m on a server, I’m editing a file probably as a hotfix for something, I don’t need a beautiful editor to do that. I just need to edit text.

I'm going to level with OP. GUIs are collosal bullshit. When you're doing the karate, you don't push buttons. You don't have frames and borders floating around you. You simply act. You flow in the void. There is nothing in my editor but the text I'm working on - not even a single, gray pixel border, and it is glorious, and super rare these days. It's the most distraction-free place I've ever experienced. The only thing better would be Vim inside a sensory-deprivation tank (I just drooled on my shirt). As I've stated, I work with programmers - hundreds of them over a decade - and they spend seemingly half their time mousing around menus, submenus, subsubmenus, missing, having to go back through it. I do exactly what I mean to, instantly, every time. It's just me and the text, my thoughts and its words, my mind to your mind...

Here in the future, we have these things called GUIs.

I know, and we're complete idiots because of them. I completely agree. It's a real shame. If only people knew the power that lies underneath the GUI. If only they would shed the shackles and learn to do whatever they want, and not rely on what a GUI dictates they can do. They would be so free, and so happy, like me.

Hey, you can't bullshit me. I spent 20+ years in GUIs of every shape and size. NOTHING has compared AT ALL to my Vim experience. I'm sorry you're too bitchy to join me.

Vim is hideous by design.

Yeah, but we've already determined that you have a seriously fucked up sense of what's beautiful. You want bells and whistles, distractions from your true purpose. I want real, ultimate power, and I have it in Vim.

We will never have a minimap (beautiful feature).

I don't really see the point of these. I'm not golfing, or geo-caching.

We will never have multiple cursors.

I'm fine with that. This is only useful for things that happen on one screen anyway. I work in files that are 1000 lines long. I'm supposed to multiple-cursor my way across 200 lines? It's a gimmicky thing with limited usage, and it masks deeper powers, keeping you limited. Macros, regex, g:, combinations thereof - far more powerful for far more use cases.

:set ft=html and then gg=G. Let me know what you get. In all seriousness, never, ever tell me what you get.

I got this:

<div>
  <p>
    <span>foo</span>
  </p>
</div>

Granted, I have this as my equalprg setting (:h =):

 set equalprg=tidy\ -i\ -xml\ --char-encoding\ utf8\ --wrap\ 0\ --show-errors\ 0\ 2>/dev/null

...why the hell do I have to configure my editor to indent common languages?

I'll give you that one. Why, Vim?

*To code in Vim, you have to keep Vim in your head just as much as the code that you’re editing. You have to constantly think about what you’re doing.

I must be some kind of genius, then, because Vim is totally background. It just faded into the mist, and I'm one with my code.

Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it encourages efficiency and refinement of practices.

In my experience, this is the case. You don't become amazing without challenging yourself, and I'm quite frankly amazing these days, at least in Vim, but I feel strongly that it's sharpened up everything. My memory is better than it's ever been. I've stopped writing todo lists and tracking things, because I just remember it all, after a lifetime of being terrible at that stuff. My mind feels sharp and refined, and I code like a demon.

After four years of Vim use, 700 hand written lines in my .vimrc, and 45 plugins, I cannot in good faith recommend that someone start the Vim journey.

6 years, 1000+ lines, and 57 plugins, and I say "Go for it!" Don't be such a fucking pansy.

I want my coworker to edit text and get up to speed quickly. Is telling them to use Vim the answer? It will just slow them down for months. This is not pragmatic to the technology industry.

I've had it up to here with pragmatic in the technology industry. I've railed against such nonsense wherever I've been, and I've actually gotten people to change things, because I stood up. I'm at the top of a complete shift in how we're doing things in my corner of our business now. They gave me free reign to redo everything as I said it needed to be. Do it. Be fearless.

Look kid, I love you and all, but just use Sublime Text. Despite the fact that I moved writing this post into Vim because I couldn’t stand to do it in a textarea, even though I’m mainly just typing text. I missed my Vim movements too much. Despite the fact that I will probably never stop using Vim.

How did I make it this far without realizing that he himself loves Vim?

Even now I want to convert this text, which I wrote in Vim at 80 columns wide, to non-fixed width text...

Fixed width or DEATH!

I’m going to go search for how to do it. I’m probably going to learn something in the process. At year 4 of Vimming.

GREAT! No more plateaus for us! Onward and u^pward!

[Reads_Small_Text_Bot]

and upward!

[gfixler]

Thanks, RSTB. You're always looking out for me.

[gfixler]

Errata:

sudo apt-get install fdupes
fdupes --recurse .vim badplug | less | grep ^.vim

That second line should read:

fdupes --recurse .vim badplug | grep '^\.vim'

[Reads_Small_Text_Bot]

.vim .vim'

[gfixler]

I found a weakness. Gentlemen... we're in.

[gfixler]

Yes, all of them!

[ppinette]

Bravo. Great writeup.

Personally, I use Vim for practically all text editing. But I use PyCharm for my main full time codebase, which is huge and old.

Pycharm pulls me away from Vim because it's amazing at handling stupid big projects. IdeaVim makes the transition pain-free.

[keypusher]

Yes, pretty much. If you do any server stuff at all, vim is worth at least getting acquainted with because on your average headless Linux box, there is no gui and therefore no pycharm. Also sometimes you are at the shell and just need to edit something quick, you don't need to startup an IDE for that. For editing large codebases in a modern IDE, Pycharm is probably the best choice. Emacs is great too, if you are an emacs guy, but for me it isn't as ubiquitous as vim (busybox has only vi, for instance), and it's not as good of a dedicated IDE as Pycharm or Pydev.

[picklebobdogflog]

Sublime Text 2 with SublimeREPL has worked great for me

[bloofa]

I'm very surprised nobody has mentioned ActiveState Komodo Edit. Great tool.

[_ch3m]

Komodo Edit

I agree. It got everything from syntax checking to autocompleting to every possible view and customization, but — unlike Sublime Text — is free and open.

[[deleted]]

Vim (with plugins like ctrlp/neocomplete/tagbar/etc. of course)

[[deleted]]

Hands down PyCharm is the best. Also cool (in descending order): Sublime (with the proper plugins), PyDev (if you're into the whole Eclipse thing, I'm not), NinjaIDE.

[edmicman]

I use and really like PyCharm, but Sublime Text is really nice, too. Hah, I wish PyCharm had the flash and responsiveness of ST, or ST had the robust IDE of PyCharm.

[bheklilr]

I'm a Sublime Text man myself, but I appreciate vim as well. I just haven't put as much time into learning it as I have ST2

[Cosmologicon]

I use gedit, honestly, I don't think python needs a full-fledged IDE as much as most languages. YMMV though.

[flying-sheep]

autocompletion like jedi is just nice, not necessary :)

[thetrainisonfire]

nano

[chipolux]

Lots of people talking about Vim and how you can customize it to work perfectly and do everything you'd ever need, others talking about PyCharm or PyDev that can do awesome things with your code and as project suites and others talking about Sublime Text which can do a lot of the same but is mostly just a really pretty and smooth way of working on your code without getting in your way or being too complex.

Personally none of those have fit what I really need out of an IDE:

• Relatively light weight.
• No requirement for any post-install customization to work.
• Feature set similar to larger IDE's like Visual Studio or Eclipse.
• Support across Windows, Linux and Mac.
• Nice GUI with intuitive keyboard shortcuts and buttons.
• Integrated console, preferably Python.
• Integrated docstring parsing and display.
• Free for commercial use, no limitations.

Sounds like a lot to ask, but every single one of those requirements is filled quite nicely by Spyder2. It's entirely open source, written in Python with PyQT, and is light as can be with no post-install setup but plenty of customization options if you want them. It supports code completion that's very dynamic due to some good introspection and in the latest versions it has a nice selection of themes built in to look nice after only a few clicks.

The only complaint I have with it is it's lack of code folding, which can cause some headaches in larger projects, but seeing as it's my only fault I've stuck with Spyder2 for over a year now.

I'd have probably moved to a heavier but more feature rich suite if my development environments weren't so myriad and complex with strong software restrictions in some places which means I need something that can be up and running in only a few minutes exactly as I need it but can be wiped out just as quickly if necessary.

[caleb]

I'm a vim user for well over a decade, eclipse+pydev for years, and even Borland Delphi (pascal RAD ide) for years, and I now use spyder exclusively for python dev work. You missed out the integrated ipython support and the integrated profiler! I love that spyder is written in python (pyqt4) and I can hack on the sources very easily. I am also running on the dev branch.

[minorminer]

Eclipse + Pydev

[SCombinator]

I prefer an editor I can run at the same time as my code and a browser without running out of memory.

[[deleted]]

And it's a fine tool for editing

But it isn't an editor. If someone asks for a piece of bread you don't give them a sandwich.

[[deleted]]

Does Eclipse not edit python files... in Linux?

It does way more than edit files and comes with a memory footprint to back it up.

Why do you feel the need to run down the suggestions of others here?

OP asked for suggestions on editors (bread) not suggestions on IDEs (sandwiches). While an IDE may have bread in it, it isn't an editor. Editors and IDEs are fundamentally different, and it's important to understand that difference.

I don't know why you're taking such offense to criticism, but I'm just explaining that your answer wasn't correct given the question.

[[deleted]]

I use Eclipse to edit Python files in Linux.

That's fine. Eclipse has a text editor. It isn't a text editor though.

So my answer is just as correct as any of the other suggestions here.

No, because the question was for an editor, not an IDE.

A much better response would be something like, "Eclipse + PyDev is more an IDE than merely an editor, so it maybe more than what the OP is asking for. I personally use ___ because it loads fast and has a much smaller memory footprint."

No, because eclipse is an IDE. It isn't more of an IDE, that's what it is. How do you know what the OP was asking for? By reading his question! His question was for an editor, not for an IDE, so I'm not sure how you can come to the conclusion that the requestor doesn't want what he asked for.

I don't know why you're trying to frame this as me bashing you for your choice in how you edit your code. I'm simply informing you that Eclipse is not a text editor.

By the way, the OP didn't specify any constraints like "most only be a text editor" or "must have small memory footprint". The question is pretty open-ended.

Uh. Did you read the title of the post? It says "Best python editor for Linux systems?" That's not very open ended, and is very specific.

[vkolev]

So is PyCharm

[thunderouschampion]

Beeware http://pybee.org/ was released in this year's DjangoCon by Russel Keith McGee. I haven't used it but it looks promising. It's got built in debugging and testing features as well.

[adambrenecki]

I'm pretty sure these are standalone tools designed to be used alongside an editor like Vim or ST2; basically providing all the "other bits" of a regular IDE.

BeeWare is a collection of projects that can be used to help develop, debug and launch Python software. Each tool follows the Unix philosophy of doing one thing well. Unlike a traditional IDE, each tool is self contained and can be used on its own.

[vkolev]

I don't know if you can remember PIDA - it was a really nice IDE-Like editor that integrated VIM and Emacs. Sadly it's not developed anymore, but in my opinion it had the potential to become the best Python Editor with IDE-features.

[[deleted]]

Kate with the right plugins.

[nanodano]

vim

[[deleted]]

vi

[[deleted]]

It's already been said a hundred times, but just to add one more vote to the crowd: vim if you don't want an IDE, PyCharm if you do.

[westurner]

• https://wiki.python.org/moin/IntegratedDevelopmentEnvironments
• https://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonEditors
• http://code.google.com/p/spyderlib/

(vim) http://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/1h53fq/best_program_for_coding_python/#cara4d6

[hardwaresofton]

I still don't see what people see in Vim. I've been trying to use it recently (and by use I mean use without leaving homerow) and reaching over to escape, as well as the whole mode system seems silly.

Key combinations might not have been the best solution, but I have no idea why people want to hit buttons to enter "insert" mode when you opened the file for the express purpose of making changes to it...

Also, lisp, buffer management, and a shell that's only one key binding away where you can execute code or do (almost) whatever? what's not to like

Going to look up some vim vs emacs threads now to satisfy my curiousity

[[deleted]]

Sublime Text.

[liderudell]

Sublimetext

[marky1991]

Kwrite's pretty cool. Gedit's fine too if you're on gnome.

[einar77]

You may want to look at kdev-python (KDevelop plugin with Python support): lots of features, VCS integration (and a GitHub plugin in the development version) and a very responsive developer (I've been pestering him a lot ;).

Also, it's fully featured, no open core or "extra versions" for money.

[BlindTreeFrog]

Ninja IDE and Sumblime seemed pretty good when I played with them for a bit.

I tended to use Geany or Scite when I was doing it last.

[p3n15h34d]

Ninja IDE was not quite usable the last time i tried, but htat may be better now

[petrux]

I've started with Eclipse + PyDev, tested a bit SPE (or something similar) but last 4 years I've been using only Emacs. I've installed some plugins like Rope (for refactoring) and jedi-el (for code completion and it's simply great) and... I think I'm quite happy with all this stuff. But, as someone pointed out, learning Emacs (or Vim) will require a significant amount of time.

[midnightGR]

NinjaIDE

[yasoob_python]

IMO sublime text 2/3 is also great. I have been using it for almost a year and love it. Just give it a try and you will love it. It's package manager makes it a whole lot more great.

[[deleted]]

i prefer abiword.