Best Cross-Platform, GUI Editor/IDE For Python?

What do you find is the best text editor for Python software development? I've tried several, and I'm always frustrated by the limitations of each. Eclipse is cool, but it's huge, and I've had multiple problems with corruption of the workspace. It got so bad at one point that every week or so I was tearing it down and recreating it. I spent so much time re-creating Eclipse's workspace that I found any productivity gains were lost due to Eclipse's brokenness. (Read more below.)

Morgan Greywolf continues: "I've also done the Emacs thing. Emacs is cool, but I found that I missed code browsing. So then I installed the Emacs Code Browser, Semantic and associated elisp code and found that it didn't work right half the time. I also seem to prefer either vi/Vim style editors, CUA-style editors, or WordStar-style editors.

Unfortunately, there are no GUI WordStar-style editors and none of them are cross-platform with Windows.

So, that left me with Scintilla/SCiTE. Which is nice, but, the code browsing doesn't seem to be able do autocomplete with PyGTK (to be fair, Eclipse's didn't work so well, either in that regard, at least not on the default Ubuntu install)

SCiTE loads fast, does nice Python highlighting, and has the ability to run code right from the browser. Unforutnately, unlike Eclipse or Emacs, there's no ability to do step/trace style debugging. *sigh*

So, okay, does anyone have any other ideas?"

Wingware

[Otter]

Wing IDE [wingware.com], although I usually just work in Kate.

Vi/Vim!

[thedak]

Vi/Vim/GVim!

Bullshit

[BcNexus]

And one more thing: There is this think called 'Google' [justfuckinggoogleit.com], you may have heard of it. It usually answers this sort of question in under 10 seconds.

Google will not give him concise recommendations based on personal experience from people he trusts. Slashdot will.

Re:Erics Python IDE, Wing IDE, Komodo. In that ord

[g1zmo]

And one more thing: There is this think called 'Google', you may have heard of it. It usually answers this sort of question in under 10 seconds.

No it doesn't, jackass. A Google search [google.com] returns a wiki with over a hundred different editors listed, a useless "article" from the equally useless about.com that starts out with "What is a text editor?", a marginally useful blog post which reviewed 6 editors with the conclusion that:

PyDev is the clear choice if you have Eclipse experience. If not, well, the situation isn't pretty. Perhaps you'll have better luck with one of the IDEs we didn't review here.

another blog post reviewing VIM's features, and a smattering of Sourceforge sites and project homepages.

None of these search results offer what the OP came here for: thoughts, experiences, insight, and anecdotal information from a massive collection of peers.

Your snide remark just makes you look like an asshead, and completely canceled out what little value was added by your mindless links to project pages (let me guess, you did a Google search!).

Re:Hey Borland.

[An ominous Cow art]

I myself would love an up-to-date version of Brief. I was even more productive in Brief that I've ever been in my second love, emacs. I know that later versions of Delphi, Turbo C++, etc. used an IDE which was Brief-like.

I know Crisp is still around, and it was based on Brief, but the price was always a bit steep for something which is just an editor.

For Python, I use WingIDE, as some others have recommended. A few years back, when I first gave Python a try and decided that it was the language for me, I looked into the IDEs available and spent the money for it. Well worth it, even though 95% of my Python coding has been unpaid hobby-type stuff. And Wing is cross-platform - I run it on OS X, but have used it on Windows too.

I tried Komodo (Editor and IDE) and Eclipse lately, but they didn't appeal to me.

Another vote for Eric

[rwa2]

I did my master's thesis in eric3 and enjoyed it very much. I originally started my project using emacs, but migrated over when I needed integrated debugging tools.

eric added the visual debugging you were asking for. You can set breakpoints all over the place, step through the source, and navigate through the variable hierarchy. Good stuff.

I think the only thing that annoyed me somewhat about eric was I couldn't set a light on dark theme, so my late night coding sessions wouldn't annoy the mrs. But that's just cosmetic.

Bonus points if your name happens to be Eric, I suppose.

Re:A few different options:

[Haeleth]

But there's a question. Why do you have to use the same editor on each platform? Are you moving around often enough that it becomes an issue?

I don't know about you, but I have several computers on my desk, and the number multiplies considerably if you take VMs and remote servers into account, running a wide variety of different operating systems.

When you're developing cross-platform software, you'd be stupid not to test it on as many platforms as possible. And when you're testing software on a platform, it's really much more convenient to edit the code on the same platform you're testing it on, instead of constantly copying it back and forwards.

I consider it a great advantage of the editor I use that it runs equally well on all those platforms, using the same configuration files so all my preferences are always there, and letting me just get on with the job of editing instead of constantly having to try to remember what feature's in which menu or what keys to press to get it. My life has become much simpler since I abandoned the Windows-only editor I used to love...