[pygame] WingIDE 2

[Pat Johnson <pat@gamesinmind.com>]

Hi all,

Every so often the topic of preferred IDE comes up. While not explicitly Pygame related it's pretty close since a good IDE can help make your Pygame (and other) development a smoother experience.

With that little intro I'd like to mention Wing IDE 2. I had checked out the original Wing IDE about 8 months ago and wasn't impressed with the multi-window interface, although it had a lot going for it in other areas. At the time I checked out every IDE I could find and settled on using the Boa Constructor IDE just for the editor.

While still in beta, Wing IDE 2 was recently released (for Windows and Linux, with an OS X version 'coming soon') and has quickly turned into my favorite IDE. The interface has been completely reworked and is now a single window with multiple panels containing various tools (although tools can float in their own windows if you prefer). There are many nice features but some of the highlights are the source browser, source assistant, debug stack data view and associated watch tools, debug probe, and auto-completion.

I'm one of (or used to be one of) those programmers who relies on print statements to check out variable contents while debugging, but Wing 2 makes viewing debug data so easy that it takes less time to set a breakpoint, run, and check out the stack data than it does to create print statements for a couple of variables. The debug probe lets you change data _and_ functions in the middle of a debug session. Becoming familiar with other debugger features is helping to reduce my debugging time.

Check it out at www.wingware.com.

-Pat
www.gamesinmind.com