Pythoneering

This summer, I’ve been able to cross off Eclipse 3.2 and Django 0.95 from my “hotly anticipated releases” list. Actually, the latter wasn’t a big deal, given that I’ve been keeping my installation up to date using subversion - but I think formal releases have an important role to play in signalling to the community at large that a project is healthy.

The Eclipse Callisto release was a big deal, given that it included not just the basic SDK but also a host of other stuff like the Web Tools Platform and Data Tools Platform. I’ve been spending some time playing with a set-up that includes these features, plus the Apache Derby plug-in and Subversive subversion plug-in. I’m hoping that this particular set-up will prove to be a great environment for our students, particularly when it comes to project work in their final year.

Two things left on my “hotly anticipated” list are Python 2.5 (currently at rc1 status) and IronPython 1.0 (currently at rc2). I haven’t downloaded any of the earlier 2.5 releases, so I’m looking forward to playing with absolute imports, the ‘with’ statement and the new hashlib module from the standard library. IronPython I have toyed with before, albeit a very early version with many rough edges; it will be interesting to see how polished the final product has become.

I was scanning Planet Python and found Juri Pakaste advising that “When everything else fails, try Emacs”. Like Juri, I’ve been pretty much seduced by Eclipse for much of my Java development, but for simple, throw-away Java code, or for my Python work, I generally use a regular programmer’s text editor. I have to admit, however, that I haven’t stuck faithfully to one favourite tool over the years.

During my PhD, a long, long time ago, I cut my teeth on MicroEmacs, graduating from there to the ‘real’ Emacs and then, for reasons now long forgotten, switching to Vim. Eventually, like Juri, I “fled back to the tender loving embrace of Emacs”. I was doing a lot of document preparation using LaTeX, and I think the lure of Emacs + AucTeX as a LaTeX development environment back then was just too great.

Just lately, though, the magic has gone from the relationship. I’ve begun to realise how important it is to me to have an editor that is easy on the eyes, given the amount of time one spends staring at it. And, frankly, Emacs fonts just don’t cut it. I guess I could have got myself some anti-aliased fonts by grabbing the very latest, Xft-enabled Emacs source from CVS; instead, I ended up giving Vim another try, and I’m happy with my decision. Vim looks great, I find I’m remembering the key presses for a surprising number of commands, and I’ve even discovered a neat plug-in for LaTeX development, called LaTeX-Suite. Goodbye Emacs, until the next time…

I wonder, am I just weird, or do others suffer from a similarly deplorable lack of loyalty to their text editor?