Question

New to programming and Python, but wondered, are there any good tools to go along with it. I know that tools such as NetBeans is good for Java. Thanks!

Answer 1

Honestly, IDLE which you get with the Python download, is pretty good in and of itself. It provides an interpreter and an editor with color coding. Maybe a bit bare bones, but I've never really felt the need for more.

Answer 2

That is what I gathered from information that I could find. Thanks for the reply!

Answer 3

Sometimes it's nice to have auto-completion. If you want it, probably the best normal IDE would be Eclipse with the pyDev addon. It lets you have a workspace, in order to easily switch between projects and py files. It lshows warning messages such as if a variable is never used after it is defined. It has outlines, a built-in console, find and replace, extra annotations, run history, debug history, and many other features.

It's pretty nice to have sometimes.

Answer 4

@338327 Where can you download that IDE?

Answer 5

@PapaBear there are a bunch of great textbooks too! Zelle's "Python Programming" would be a good starter :)

Answer 6

Well, to get the IDE, you must first download Eclipse. Make sure it's the Classic version. Make sure you have python, at least version 2.1. Then, you must add pyDev as an addon within Eclipse.

To do so, go to

http://pydev.org/download.html

and find the URLs for Eclipse, and copy main. Then, open Eclipse and go to help, and then Install New Software.
Click "Add a Site", paste the URL into the location, and name it Pydev.
Press OK, then check pyDev and pyDev for Eclipse, but not the Mylyn integration.

Then, uncheck "contact all update sites during installation to find required software".
Press next and accept, yada yada.
And once that's done, you can make python projects inside Eclipse, when you click file, new, pydev project.

Answer 7

As for books, you can check out:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0073523372/
This is Exploring Python, by Timothy Budd. It's fairly brief and to the point, but teaches the basics fairly thoroughly.

http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/
This is an online book, free, which is nice, although you CAN buy it if you want. This actually a pretty popular book, with a very good philosophy. It goes against the books which say that they can "Teach you Python in 30 Days", or something. Don't ever buy those books, read this article:
http://norvig.com/21-days.html

http://www.ibiblio.org/swaroopch/byteofpython/read/
Another free one, if you want it.

http://www.amazon.com/Core-Python-Programming-Wesley-Chun/dp/0132269937/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1341858010&
This is probably the most comprehensive book for an introduction to python, as it also teaches Network Programming, Multi-Core Programming, tkinter (GUI), Database programming, and even writing extensions to python. It also covers all the basics, of course.

Answer 8

Good stuff! Thanks.