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Is something like this available for PyDev (Eclipse)? Supposedly, PyDev already has autocompletion, but it doesn't seem very effective. Because of my experience

Is something like this available for PyDev (Eclipse)? Supposedly, PyDev already has autocompletion, but it doesn't seem very effective. Because of my experience with PyDev's autocompletion, I am also skeptical of PySmell's effectiveness. I'd love to see a screencast of it in action. Does anyone have first had experience with both PySmell's and PyDev's autcompletion? With Python IDEs, my biggest complaint is with this functionality.

bad_user 17y ago
Vim, Emacs and Textmate aren't IDEs per se. They are general purpose text editors optimized for editing texts (although one could argue Emacs is an OS :)) The nature of Python is such that it's not possible to determine precisely all members of an object at compile time. I've used PyDev and I discovered that auto-completion in Python actually annoys me because it doesn't work all the time. For example, in Python you can add a method with a simple x.__dict__['method'] = some_method, not to mention magic methods like __getattr__. The trouble is many Python modules add members to classes through various meta-programming techniques. When using PyDev searching for a member name, instead of using the API's documentation, you can find yourself assuming that the member you're looking for does not exist, leading you in a wrong direction, and thus waisting more time. If the behavior of intellisense is unpredictable, it kind of stands in your way more than it helps. And without intellisense, it makes no sense to use a bloated IDE for Python (or dynamic languages in general). Dynamic languages have simple APIs anyway that can be learned easily. I have a shortcut defined for the "dir" and "help" commands in Python, and for "perldoc" in Perl, executed on the token under the cursor, and with the help of flymake-mode, it's more than enough. And in many instances it's even more productive ... if I don't remember the usage of DateTime::Format::Strptime in Perl I just look at the CPAN docs with perldoc, copy/pasting the example given.
wesm 17y ago
I used PyDev for a long time and recently switched to Wing IDE (had my company buy it for me). It's seriously like night and day when it comes to autocompletion and other IDE features that I found lacking in PyDev. Downside: not free.

bad_user 17y ago

Vim, Emacs and Textmate aren't IDEs per se. They are general purpose text editors optimized for editing texts (although one could argue Emacs is an OS :)) The nature of Python is such that it's not possible to determine precisely all members of an object at compile time. I've used PyDev and I discovered that auto-completion in Python actually annoys me because it doesn't work all the time. For example, in Python you can add a method with a simple x.__dict__['method'] = some_method, not to mention magic methods like __getattr__. The trouble is many Python modules add members to classes through various meta-programming techniques. When using PyDev searching for a member name, instead of using the API's documentation, you can find yourself assuming that the member you're looking for does not exist, leading you in a wrong direction, and thus waisting more time. If the behavior of intellisense is unpredictable, it kind of stands in your way more than it helps. And without intellisense, it makes no sense to use a bloated IDE for Python (or dynamic languages in general). Dynamic languages have simple APIs anyway that can be learned easily. I have a shortcut defined for the "dir" and "help" commands in Python, and for "perldoc" in Perl, executed on the token under the cursor, and with the help of flymake-mode, it's more than enough. And in many instances it's even more productive ... if I don't remember the usage of DateTime::Format::Strptime in Perl I just look at the CPAN docs with perldoc, copy/pasting the example given.

wesm 17y ago

I used PyDev for a long time and recently switched to Wing IDE (had my company buy it for me). It's seriously like night and day when it comes to autocompletion and other IDE features that I found lacking in PyDev. Downside: not free.