[Noisebridge-discuss] Python and All That (was: reply-to)

[d p chang]

Christoph Maier <cm.hardware.software.elsewhere at gmail.com> writes:

> Question du jour: What do y'all use to write and debug (i.e., single
> step and/or unit test) python?

i learned all my python writing a little svgizer for josh's muralizer,
but i found most of the 'tools' (pdb in my case) to be not much better
than 'print' and the repl itself.

i mostly ran into a few categories of things:

 - the sucky documentation for the standard library (mostly the xml
   goo). running things in the repl w/ the inspect stuff told me what i
   needed to know about the object etc.

 - syntax things. the repl was pretty good for just trying little things
   out w/ strings etc to make sure that i groked the actual
   documentation (eg, the re package seemed to work slightly differently
   than i expected).

 - for a language w/ the 'compiler' exposed the exception/cndition
   system is pretty weak. i would have preferred to have it drop into
   the debugger at the repl so that i could poke around and continue.
   if this exists, i never found it.

your mileage *will* vary since your problems aren't mine :-)

\p
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A great step toward independence is a good humored stomach. - Seneca