<frustrated>Am I that stupid?
God am I frustrated. It’s 3 am and I’ve been trying to setup a decent Python environment in Ubuntu since 10 am yesterday!
Well, I gotta say that I’m very well impressed with Ubuntu, though. It’s a pretty cool OS with an awesome user experience.
My problems start when I push a little harder than a regular user would.
Introduction
As you might have noticed from my previous posts I’m developing in Python now. In the company I’ll be working they are completely against not-open source products, which I find pretty cool.
As a result of that, I’ll be using Ubuntu (or any other distro for that matter) as my host OS. So I figured why not learn it before I start working there. That way I won’t be a burden on my team.
So I created a VM, installed Ubuntu 64 and started updating, installing programs, downloading SVN trunk for my projects and all that stuff you are familiar with.
The great news is that Ubuntu 64 comes with Python and Java installed. “GREAT”, I thought, I’m almost set.
Not so fast, buddy
My good friend Claudio Figueiredo told me that very likely the IDE I’ll be using at my new job is Eclipse with PyDev. I’ve had less than optimal experiences with Eclipse before, but hey, since I’m trying a hell of a lot of new things, I might as well try the new version.
It looks promising with code completion, code analysis and unit testing support baked in, so I did as the tutorial asked me to. Downloaded the latest release, unziped it in my personal folder, and opened Eclipse.
Cool, it works! How smart am I?!
Well, not all I need to do is install the plug-in. Followed the tutorial in PyDev and it installed FLAWLESSLY. At this point I’m feeling like a God (root). The next step is to create a PyDev project (Eclipse is all about workspaces and projects, go figure). So I create a project. It asks for what version of Python I’m aiming. Very smart! So I choose Python 2.5. Next it asks for the interpreter I want to use. Cool, except I don’t have any interpreters configured (which PyDev points to me in a nice message with a link to configure one). Ok, I missed that step. No problem. So I go to terminal and execute:
which python
That results in “/usr/bin/python” (not that much of a newbie, am I?).
Cool, so I set the interpreter to be /usr/bin/python. At this point PyDev gives me a nice message showing all the paths I would like to add to PYTHONPATH. Awesome, it recognized the Python version! I click ok and it recognizes all of Python 2.5 built-ins, which is really cool.
Dear reader, from here onwards is just a spiral of pain, agony and frustration. If you want to stop reading I won’t be mad at you.
Well, when I click OK, I get an error. The issue here is that Eclipse is so smart that it handles the Error Dialog for me, so I couldn’t see the error message. After a lot of digging, I got the error message. A NullPointerException in Java. Ok, google-digging time. After a lot of googling and a lot of dead-ends, Claudio advised me to install Ubuntu 32 instead, since it probably was a compatibility issue with 64 bits apps.
“Hmm that makes sense”, I thought. So after reinstalling a whole new OS in a new VM, and repeating and rinsing the above procedures, I STILL CAN’T GET THE FREAKING PYDEV THING TO WORK WITH THE SAME CRYPTIC ERROR MESSAGE!
Ok, I can live without Eclipse
I have lived before and I’ll still be doing it in the future. So let’s check what are my options as far as IDEs go.
Well, I have thoroughly researched Python IDEs before when doing Python coding in Windows. There are not as many as you’d think, considering the amazing language that Python is.
When doing Windows development I settled for Wing, which has a pretty decent editor (doesn’t even begin to compare to Visual Studio 2008 with Resharper – THERE I SAID IT!), code completion and project management. It has one small issue, though. It’s neither free nor open source. That’s ok, though, considering the Personal license costs mere 30 dollars. The professional one which offers some features I want goes for a hundred and something. I don’t care, if they offer a great experience I’d gladly pay for it. But my employer probably won’t, as a company policy. I’m not sure of that, though, and before people start talking, THIS IS MY VIEW, NOT THAT OF ANY OF MY EMPLOYERS, PREVIOUS, CURRENT OR FUTURE!
So I started digging options for IDEs for Ubuntu. One might think that I’m just lazy as far as IDEs go, and that’s absolutely right! I want to write production code. I don’t want to jump through hurdles just to get a breakpoint done, or have to remember every single command in the language, or even when renaming a variable go through every single place that references it to change it. Those things are productivity killers for me. I would pay a lot of money (at least a lot as far as my financial standards go) to have all that work done for me by the IDE.
So, one of two things happened. Either I am too dumb to use/find good Python IDEs for Ubuntu/Windows or there aren’t any. I’m REALLY hoping for the first one, because I might learn in time. If it’s the latter, hey I might start one and sell it (like I have the time for it, anyway).
So far I’m really really disappointed with the whole experience I got trying to setup an Ubuntu environment for Python development.
Wing
I´m downloading Wing for Ubuntu from Wingware. I really hope that my experience with it is better than what I got with the other ones.
Just for the sakes of comments, the other ones are:
- Eclipse (well couldn’t even try, since I can’t make it work)
-SPE (installed through Add/Remove Apps)
-Genie (installed through Add/Remove Apps)
-PIDA (installed through Add/Remove Apps)
-ERIC (installed through Add/Remove Apps)
-BOA (installed through Add/Remove Apps)
Conclusion
I know I have high standards as far as an IDE go. I know I’ll get flames for saying that Visual Studio is a great IDE from people saying that IntelliJ is a lot better. It might be, the guys at Jetbrains are THAT GOOD! If only they released a Python IDE! I’d buy without even trying it.
The thing is, I WANT TO CODE, not do boring tasks that the IDE can easily take care for me.
Oh and when people come and say that I’m not giving credit to those hard-working open source developers behind the above projects, that can’t be further from the truth! What I’m saying here is that I’m a professional developer, and as such I cannot settle for less than optimal performance. So if ANY, that’s right, ANY of the developers of the above products would like to talk about insight on how to improve their IDEs, I’d LOVE to talk (that’s if they want to listen what I have to say anyway, who am I to think they would ask me for feedback).
This post is actually just me ranting about being a newbie on the environment I am trying to setup. I’m pretty sure that people can code lightning fast with their VIM/Emacs/Notepad-like apps, except I’m not that cool, so I need an IDE.
Sigh…
</frustrated>
UPDATE:
Netbeans for Python has an alpha release and it's looking really good. It's the IDE I'm using for python coding now. It has some very nice features like reminding you of unused imports and stuff like that. The refactorings do not work as I expect, but I can live with that.
I hope it becomes a killer IDE! Go Netbeans guys, GO! Link: http://wiki.netbeans.org/Python