Revisiting Python IDEs

I bought a license for Wing IDE today after my trial period ran out a couple months ago. The two things that pushed me to get it were the snappy feel and the awesome autocompletion. After I started using it again, I was also reminded of the (truly) smart indenting and the great code navigation features.

I still have Komodo 3.5 of course. I will miss its Subversion integration, its toolbox (where I was able to write various quick utilities like launching PyChecker), and its ... hm, there probably should be a third thing, but I can't think of it. Sigh. I really want to like it, but it's just so slow. 3.5 is the fastest yet, but it still feels clunky to me. Plus its autocomplete is half-baked at best, consisting mostly of brain-dead "you typed this before" suggestions.

Also, unlike Ned, I can't stand SPE. It's got so much icon furniture. I like the spartan look of Komodo and Wing in this regard. I don't like a bunch of visual trash on the screen when I'm trying to code. I also haven't ever been able to get a hold of a stable version either. It does have neat points like the PyChecker integration and UML designer, but I can't stand Ugly.

Ned also likes PyDev in Eclipse. Bleah. It feels bolted on. I have to constantly descend through menus to find anything. It barely feels better than running SciTE, and that's not saying much for an IDE.

Boa Constructor also has all the attraction of a baboon's rear-end. The only thing I'd want to extract from it is the BicycleRepairMan refactoring features. (I have to admit, I did make a half-hearted attempt to call BRM from a Komodo macro, but I couldn't even get a working version of BRM from SourceForge.)

Well, this turned into a tirade. :) I'm going back to write some more Python in Wing instead of continuing to rant.

Update: I thought of the third thing for Komodo. I miss the debugger. Wing's debugger is lame: no tooltips to display variable values, funky exceptions being thrown inside Tkinter, and somewhat indeterminate behavior on certain breakpoints. To be fair, Komodo has the breakpoint issue too sometimes -- just a lot less often. Bottom line is, I'm back in Komodo for my current program to get it debugged. It's a shame that I really need the functionality of both, but at least I have them available.

iTunes 10 Most Recent

My iTunes "Recently Played" list is the new addition to the sidebar on my web page.

Verizon doesn't provide any server-side scripting with their web-page hosting service, so I'm using client-side JavaScript (i.e. XMLHttpRequest) to do the job. I run a Python script every hour (using XP's schtasks feature) to query iTunes for its recently played files, reformat it into HTML, and send the file via FTP to my website. The client-side Javascript in my Blogger template grabs the HTML and injects it into the webpage in the appropriate spot. And there you go.

I've tested it under IE and Firefox, and it works fine. I'll have to wait for feedback from my readers -- one reader in particular -- about other browsers.

Life at Full Capacity

I'll be leading this six-week study at church on Sunday evenings starting in mid-February. It's a study on Matthew 5 - The Sermon on the Mount - and discusses improving our relationships with others and with God.

The topic really speaks to me. After reading Philip Yancey's book Reaching for the Invisible God, I found some similar themes. One of Yancey's salient ideas was that when we approach God, we are dealing with an invisible, infinite Being with his own desires, thoughts and intentions. If I find that all my plans center around myself and my desires, it begs the question of whether I'm listening to God at all. Yancey talks about cultivating a "God-consciousness", where we are actively listening and speaking to Him through prayer & meditation. When I'm faithful at practicing it :) , it certainly makes a huge difference in how I react to events in my life and how I interact with others.

Also related is another book (and series of sermons) by Bill Hull called Choose the Life. He talks specifically about how discipleship (defined as "following Jesus") is for everyone. Not just the monk, priest or pastor. As Hull puts it,

The life of spiritual transformation is also for the uneducated, the nonreader, the action-oriented, and those who are repulsed by structure.

This makes a lot of sense if you think about the disciples that Jesus chose for His twelve.

I'm excited by what God has been teaching me so far and what lies ahead in this study. Teaching the topic will be the biggest event I've planned yet on discipleship, but it should be challenging and fun.

Tim Bray on backups

Tim just made this post about making backups. It's more in "war story" format than my post, but they're very similar in their conclusions (including Steven's recommendation about external hard drives).