Pragmatic C++ writing

Sometimes I see C++ code that does what it should do, but in a way that needs a big looking glass, a lot of patience and many hours of descrambling 😉  Why do some programmers tend to make things more difficult than they in fact are?  Imho it all comes down to one thing : showing off.  Programmers, software developers, whatever you call us, we are famous for a certain disease called ego tripping.  I try not to myself, but many times I find myself writing some code that is too complicated, very over the top.

We all should strive for a more pragmatic way of writing code.   I will post some pragmatic programming related reflections on my C++ page from time to time…

Looking for a python IDE with user interface creation support

Currently my quest for python RAD tools halted on a couple of tools. I’m trying them out for the moment. The following tools seem to be promising and quite user friendly. Stani’s Python Editor is currently my favorite tool on my windows XP laptop. When used in combination with the wxGlade GUI designer you can build something very fast.

There is one small detail that every IDE I stumbled upon so far lacks. It is not possible to change the editor. For people like me who are used to work (on a daily base) with the ubiquitous editor Vim, this is a real p**n in the *ss. The ubiquitous Vim seems not to be so omnipresent when it comes to python editing. Of course Vim has builtin support for python syntax colouring, but then again… No class view, function lists (besides the ctags), nothing python specific, no python shell integrated into Vim.

Lightning struck when I found Pida. Finally a python ide that uses Vim as it editor and has a builtin shell, file browser and a lot more, even builtin gtk support. The latter is also the problem – gtk is not cross platform (not like wxWindows). Also Pida itself does not exist in a windows version. So on my linux distro I use Pida combined with wxGlade for RAD.

An alternative is the famous Boa constructor IDE, which both works on windows and linux. However, this boa does not come with Vim integrated either…

To be continued…