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Microsoft Programming Python

Microsoft Wants Your Feedback On Its New Python IDE 303

Posted by timothy from the is-the-embrace-part-of-the-python? dept.
First time accepted submitter phoolishcyrus writes "Dear Slashdot: would you kindly take a look at our little project, PTVS — Python Tools for Visual Studio? It helps you develop Python (using any interpreter, not just IronPython) and comes with a few other goodies. Spare no punches."
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Microsoft Wants Your Feedback On Its New Python IDE More

Microsoft Wants Your Feedback On Its New Python IDE

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  • What the shell is this? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tepples ( 727027 ) <.tepples. .at. .gmail.com.> on Tuesday August 30, 2011 @07:23AM (#37251846) Homepage Journal

    "Note: PTVS does not install into VS Express Editions" [codeplex.com]. It needs some sort of Visual Studio Shell [microsoft.com], which is separate from VS Express for some odd reason.

    And has Microsoft added the necessary pieces to the version of the .NET Compact Framework for Xbox 360 Indie Games and Windows Phone 7 to allow DLR languages such as IronPython to work in applications for those platforms?

    • VS Express can't use plugins. That's one of the "upsell" features of Visual Studio Professional and higher.

      So to build plugins that's free for anyone to use without needing to pay the ~$400 for Visual Studio you need to use the Visual Studio Isolated Shell [microsoft.com]

    • Re:What the shell is this? (Score:4, Informative)

      by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2011 @01:26PM (#37256306) Journal

      A simple way to explain the difference between VS Express and VS Shell is this:

      VS Shell is VS without any language-specific services. Basically you get the core IDE services only - menus, toolbars & tool windows, command system to wire it all up, text editor (with syntax highlighting, but you need a language plugin to drive it), and core build services. This is mainly intended for the use by anyone who's making their own language, and wants to build it on top of an existing IDE - they just take VS Shell, slap their own language service and project system on top, and redistribute the result. One real world example of a commercial product doing this is Delphi Prism. However, the side effect is that Shell can also be used by end users to install extensions on top to get a working product for free.

      VS Express (like any other VS version) is, essentially, VS Shell + whatever language the Express edition supports (C#/VB/C++); but with any further extensibility disabled.

      In other words, with VS, for free, you can either have plugins (in particular, other third-party languages) without Microsoft's C++/C#/VB tooling, or C++/C#/VB tooling without plugins. If you want both at the same time, you need VS Professional or higher, which is not free.

  • Where are the Java bashers when you really need them? Oh, they either use patent unencumered scripting languages or go the MS way, but not both at the same time.
    Btw. does anyone use IronPyhton and F#, or they just look good in PR blurbs?

    • Where are the Java bashers when you really need them?

      They're involved in a flame war with the C# bashers at the moment, but don't worry, they'll be along shortly after hell freezes over....

    • Btw. does anyone use IronPyhton and F#, or they just look good in PR blurbs?

      Seriously, F# is awesome. These course notes and code examples explain why in far more detail than I ever could. http://www.itu.dk/courses/BPRD/E2010/ [www.itu.dk].

    • ResolverOne [resolversystems.com] is written entirely on IronPython. IIRC, each file also can embed Python code with a subset of the standard library, so it's like VBA on steroids. You decide if that's good or bad.

  • Ups and Downs (Score:3, Informative)

    by robertkeizer ( 1596715 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2011 @07:33AM (#37251934)
    I find it okay to work in. Coming from VI and the command line some of the features are nice, others not so much. One thing I noticed about the python plugin for VS is that when using PySide, you must run in interactive mode, rather than debug. A nice feature that I found lacking was for VS to automatically generate a list of classes and functions for a library that is imported. Obviously this tool is integrated fairly heavily into python at points as evident in the profiling section ( good work by the way ), so it would be handy to refresh classes/module listings when "import foo" or "from foo import bar" was detected in a save. All in all, not a bad development system.

  • Are you serious? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by phonewebcam ( 446772 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2011 @07:40AM (#37252010) Homepage

    Whilst you continue extorting $5 per Android handset from HTC [thenextweb.com] your new touchy-feely lets-be-buddies act is worth less than piss froth. So no, I won't even be dignifying your request with a visit to your site out of curiosity.

    • Yes, because at Microsoft, the same people are responsible for everything. It's actually a toolshed with two guys in it who handle all the coding, market research, legalese, and so on and so on.
      • Just like on CSI. Those cops are AWESOME! They can do just about everything, all in the same lab too.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        He that lies down with dogs, shall rise up with fleas.

  • Don't get too used to the UI. I hear the next version has a Ribbon Bar for Python, which puts 70% of the most-commonly used commands right where you need them. The other 30% of the commands are there too... somewhere.
  • "pull no punches" not "spare no punches"

    • I thought "pull no punches" meant "don't hit me too hard" and "spare no punches" means "swing all you want".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ethan0 ( 746390 )

        No, a pulled punch is one that is not too hard. You pull back at the last moment, and don't hit with force. "Don't pull any punches" means, hit me full-force.

  • I installed it a whle back... (Score:3)

    by shic ( 309152 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2011 @08:14AM (#37252366)

    I am **extremely** impressed. It's, by far, my favourite Python IDE (I'm using it in the free Visual Studio shell...)

    One drawback is that it encourages editing python under Windows rather than on a Unix-like platform, but that's something I can live with when it delivers productivity.

    I'm yet to use it for a real project - but I'm looking forwards to that experience.

    I'd definitely encourage anyone to, at least, give it a try.

  • Hi Microsoft! Thanks for releasing stuff under an Apache license. Now if, for some reason I end up in Hell, at least I know I will be comfortable with a big coat, because it should be freezing there.

    I will report to you about the program once I figure it out how to install an MSI on Debian.

    Yours truly: the average Linux geek that reads Slashdot.

  • Warning! Potentially dumb question:

    What value does a Python IDE provide? Given that Python is strongly typed only at run-time, the IDE cannot perform syntax-completion, rename variables, provide warnings/errors as you type, provide context sensitive help, etc., that you would normally get with an IDE for a statically typed language such as Java. Might as well just stick to using your favorite text editor.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rjh ( 40933 )

      The short version is that just because it uses runtime typing doesn't mean you can't make really accurate guesses about what types will be active at any given point. Consider a really short Python program (consisting of something like "x=MyObject()" and "print x.method()"): it's easy to infer the type of x at its declaration, recognize there is no code path that rebinds x to a different type, and when accessing x later on pop up code completion that shows MyObject methods.

  • I read the docs for this yesterday, came away impressed about things like iPython integration and the idea that other IDE features of VS could be used for Python. That said, I'm stuck with the position that is it simply too much work and pain to use Windows as an underlying platform, when what I deploy to is largely web apps running on Linux/OSX. I use Windows 7 in virtual machines to test sites with MSIE, and Windows Explorer WebDAV, but that is about it -- it is a pain to do much more in a VM. I just

  • I use Code::Blocks. It runs on all platforms so my code looks and acts the same when I'm building on whatever platform I need my applications to run on. If I need my application to run on Linux/Mac/Windows I open the cbp file, add the needed ifndef's, adjust for the libraries, and compile. If you build GUI applications WxWidgets work very nicely with Code::Blocks. Code::Blocks has been doing Python for quite a while now. Python Plugin [codeblocks.org]

  • For Microsoft: The only way you guys can return to being the platform of choice is to have the biggest app store. It isn't going to happen. You moved to proprietary languages in an attempt to further your grip and lost it all. There will never again be a "only works on Windows". There is only room for two and Android has already rounded the second corner while you sit at the gate.

    For the two people that might not know: Most applications these days are based on Python, Java, and HTML/CSS/javascript, wi

  • MSFT guy here. will answer as many Q's (Score:5, Informative)

    by phoolishcyrus ( 1004148 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2011 @10:57AM (#37254436)

    as best I can (while running between meetings)! Thanks for all your comments & questions so far.

    Background info:

    PTVS is basically a 2 person (1 dev, 1 test) effort. Recently we had a summer intern & a new dev has joined since to work on Big Data (think dryad/hadoop/etc) which is great. We've been running "under the radar" so to speak until now. The parts that we're actually most proud of are that we convinced mgmt to let us do this as Open Source, and more importantly under Apache 2.0. The fact we can actually accept code contributions back (may be a 1st?) is huge too. Not a big deal for most, but trust me, as staunch pro OSS guys, it was a big deal & took a lot of work to accomplish...

    Thanks in advance & on to answering questions...

    PS Just updated the project page w a couple of videos to give you an overview. Excuse the cheesy production, we don't exactly have a marketing dept.

    PTVS - Core editing experience : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CoGsSlrxKk [youtube.com]
    PTVS - Profiling : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCx7rlPyEzE [youtube.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rjh ( 40933 )

      I'm not a Windows guy, mostly. Can't avoid it completely, but I try to whenever I can. Most of my work is done in various UNIXes. That said:

      Thank you.

      Seriously. Please ignore the haters. Me, I'm tickled pink y'all are doing this work: anything that helps the Python community is A-OK in my book. :)

      (goes off to his Windows 7/64 desktop to install PTVS...)

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