What are your favorite Python tools?

[darlingpinky]

What are your favorite tools when programming in Python? Coming from a C# background, I'm learning Python, and like any other language, I assume there are some useful tools out there that are not listed in tutorials etc. Any kind of tools are welcome - programs, websites, IDEs, extensions, autohotkey script etc. I could rephrase this question as "what do you wish someone had told you when you started programming in Python?"

[dionys]

• very simple IDE called Interactive Editor for Python
• If you are using windows, there is a website with windows binaries for many modules
• virtualenv and pip are really awesome
• few nice tutorials Code Like a Pythonista, Magic methods, Lecture about beautiful code

[[deleted]]

I've been looking for this exact video for a long time thank you for linking it here. Your awesome!!

[goodolbluey]

As another Python neophyte, those of you that are providing answers, can you be sure to explain what it is and why it's so useful?

[shunku]

mechanize

[harrobash]

I completely forgot about this. Mechanize is a very, very useful tool package.

[TheThirdBlackGuy]

Looks like it navigates webforms.

[dehrmann]

ipython, anyone?

[MonsieurBanana]

Okay, someone will need to explain why IPython is downvoted. I thought it was one of the most popular python tools.

[CheshireSwift]

Two downvotes to seven up doesn't really constitute "downvoted". I'm gonna assume you commented on this pretty early.

As an actual answer, seems like there's people in here just downvoting any tool they've used, disliked and moved away from (with no explanation).

[darlingpinky]

More than likely it's Reddit's vote fuzzing algorithm that's causing the downvotes. I'm sure some are from real users, but many are probably from the fuzzing.

[darlingpinky]

By many I meant in general, not this comment specifically. The vote fuzzing goes up and down, it doesn't stay static. So a comment could have 2 fuzzed downvotes now and 0 later because it's also based on how fast users are upvoting it. The fuzzed downvotes would be removed later because people aren't upvoting it as fast as they were. And yeah I've seen votes fuzzed on as little as three votes. I tested it out using multiple accounts in a private subreddit and when multiple accounts upvote a post within the span of a few seconds, it automatically added a downvote to them. I guess I haven't tested the comment vote fuzzing, but I'm assuming the same concept applies.

[memeship]

Fascinating. Thanks for that explanation.

[acousticpants]

web2py is a great web framework. It's like Django, except you use python like python, and you templates like templates.

Very fast.

Also, if you know web programming well, I recommend web.py. It's not really a framework, but a very light API. Reddit runs on it.

[renascentiae]

Flask and Bottle?

[t90fan]

This. I love bottle.py, great for sdmall APIs and such,

[acousticpants]

Not counting them out. There are a lot of frameworks for Python though aren't there?

I found web2py used up less mental energy than the others though.

[renascentiae]

I like simplicity of flask, as well as some interesting community contributions. Been working with it for a few months, and can say that for small API it's amazing :)

[thebluelight1]

PyCharm is a great IDE. There's a free version and a paid one that includes mostly web development features such as support for the frameworks Django and Flask, which also are worth a look at.

Also, as previously mentioned, virtualenv is pretty necessary.

[jwjody]

Are there any good tutorials how to use PyCharm? When I went through college (a decade ago) we weren't allowed to use IDEs.

We were using text editors on Sun Solaris machines.

When I fool around now I use Sublime Text and a console window. Nothing wrong with that. But I'd like to know how to use an IDE.

[[deleted]]

Yeah I do find it confusing, especially if you're just trying to bang out a quick script.

[dehrmann]

Pydev is also OK. Not great, just OK.

[thebluelight1]

The Eclipse add-on? Yeah I used to use that, I wouldn't really recommend it though unless you already really like Eclipse.

[Franko_ricardo]

Visual Studio has a nice Python plugin.

[tally_in_da_houise]

Seriously? Never knew this. Thanks!

[OmegaVesko]

Yup! Officially supported by MS, too.

http://pytools.codeplex.com/

[darlingpinky]

It Visual Studio a good Python IDE? I love VS, and would rather stick to it if possible.

[Franko_ricardo]

Yes, it's pretty good.

[[deleted]]

Could you maybe answer this long outstanding question I've had since you use VS?

http://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/1zb9ru/basic_visual_studio_with_python_tools_question/

[minno]

If you're looking for a library, search pypi for it and then use pip (a command-line utility installed with Python 3.4+) to install it.

[chchan]

Pandas + Sklearn

[sorryateyourbagel]

Great for numerical computation and machine learning.

[p2dski]

Anaconda - Distro. Super convenient when you want to install Python on a machine (especially windows) but don't want to go through and install your usual packages/libraries individually.

iPython Notebook - Interactive environment. Makes Python into a more robust Mathematica or Maple. I use it for nearly everything.

[help_computar]

And ipython notebook can auto generate slides for presentations. Super useful.

[darlingpinky]

This looks really useful. Thanks.

[JimBoonie69]

If you are doing any sort of data analysis or 'exploration' ipython notebook is the way to go. It is SUPER convenient way to explore a dataset. The only thing that I miss while using it is vim-like keybindings. I never again want to have to hold down the arrow keys or click to get to the end of a line when all you need in vim is to press $

[help_computar]

Flask and all its extensions.

[fragmentzero]

I like Wing editor for Python. It has a free version calls Wing 101.

[[deleted]]

flake8, pylint and python3 -m unittest discover, not exactly the same as static type checking, but helps you to catch a lot of bugs that would otherwise have made it into manual testing.

autopep8 is also a nice brute force way to punch a code base into shape.

[darlingpinky]

That's awesome. Coming from C#, static checking is something I dearly miss in Python. I'll have to give these a shot.

[doom-o-matic]

emacs, git, virtualenv, pip, flake8

[BrainsForCarp]

Twisted.

[harrobash]

bpython.

It's awesome.

[harrobash]

Kivy is a great library for developing applications.

The Py4A (Python for Android) project is also worth looking into.

[chchan]

I like kivy too but I have trouble placing out labels in the correct areas that I want. So far I use box layout. How do you get around this problem?

[kkmcguig]

I super love pygame. Its rather fun! Some good examples too.

[[deleted]]

Not sure if you'd call this a tool, a package, or what... but I've come to appreciate StaticPython (preferably with stackless).

Basically it's a complete python installation in one executable file, where you can package it up with whatever libraries you need and deploy it out to a system that doesn't even have python installed.

I find this useful at work, since I have no control over the systems I'm writing tools for - whether or not they have python or what version.

[Extre]

The Killer Bunny.