Spyder, a new interactive Scientific Python development Environment

Flash! June 26: Latest 1.1.0 version just released! visit latest spyder console

There are more development environments for Python coming into use. What is wrong with TKinter, Eric 4, geanny, even Eclipse? Nothing wrong with these but Python developers will finally choose what suits them personally. Tkinter, I find a little slow, Eric is the best so far but I lose some of my work sometimes(It pays to save your work from time to time)! Geanny and Eclipse actually works for other languages. I suggest you give each editors/environment a try!

The newest I found is Spyder, available from http://code.google.com/p/spyderlib/downloads/detail?name=spyder-1.0.3-py2.6.eggand developed by Pierre Raybaut. When I downloaded it, the egg file was stored in /temp not in ~/Downloads. You type sudo easy_install spyder-1.0.3-py2.6.egg from the command line.

Once you activate it, you will be presented with multi-paned windows for file, classes and functions, Workspace,and Interactive Shell. It has a debugger and an interface to Pylint for your source code. There is also a convenient Tools submenu for Qt Designer and Qt Linguist.



It will take time for me to be familiar with it, and I think its major competitor will be Eric which is also a Qt application.

Try it and submit comments about your experiences with Spyder. The free and open source world depends so much on feed back from users. We hope that Spyder and Eric developers will learn from each other!