For a time I’ve been searching for a good python editor under Ubuntu. I’ve tried :

  • SPE : Does not work in Turkish Locale. Have set LC_ALL = C before running. Also not so good in editing in html, css and js
  • Eric : Somehow I could not feel comfortable with it.
  • Komodo Edit : Fine in editing multiple types files, but lacks many python editing features. Comprasion with Komodo IDE is here.
  • Eclipse : Far too complex for me.
  • Komodo IDE : Powerfull enough for editing css, js, html and python. It has good code completion support, and can debug python. Also has a good source browser. Bu it is commercial and somehow it seemed slow for me while editing files, changing editor windows.

So far the ideal editor was the Komodo IDE. But I have new a candidate : NetBeans ! An early access edition of Netbeans with Python support is released. It can be downloaded from here. It nearly have all the features that I want from an editor :

  • Code completion
  • A Usable and fast source browser
  • A usable directory browser
  • Debugging
  • Fast response in editor
  • Renaming / refactoring
  • Good code highlighting
  • Ability to edit html, js and css
  • jQuery support

And the additional features I’ve liked are :

  • A database browser. Comes very handy when developing db applications.
  • Ability to connect to Firebird through Firebird JDBC driver.
  • Very nice tips about coding style
  • Very fast startup time.

More detailed information is on the wiki of NetBeans.

To install NetBeans 6.5, first install sun java6 SDK which is in multiverse repositories :

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

Then download it, and make it executable and run 🙂