[bdesimone]

I think Visual Studio is the best IDE there, but I'm not sure I'd be more productive switching from a nix based environment just for the IDE. Would anyone whose gone from nix to windows for python web development be able to comment on the experience and tradeoffs?

[edwinnathaniel]

IntelliJ is the best IDE :).

Eclipse Python support is lacking.

NetBeans seems to come along pretty well, I just hope that they have more support.

[X-Istence]

I can't stand IntelliJ, nor eclipse or NetBeans. I used to develop with TextMate, these days it is all vim.

[zalew]

> Eclipse Python support is lacking

what is it lacking exactly? (using Eclipse with Python daily for the last few years)

[taude]

I've been pretty happy with the PyCharm edition of IntelliJ (picked it up during that fire sale a few months back).

[president]

Does the community edition support Python?

[RossM]

According to this matrix[1], no. I use PHP, Python and Ruby on a day-to-day basis and really need an IDE that can support all of these. Eclipse is flaking out on me now as well.

Anyone know if IDEA really the best multi-language Eclipse alternative, or is there something better?

[1]: http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/editions_comparison_m...

[yareally]

I like it well enough for python, php, javascript, css/html and android/java. Used it once or twice for ruby, but not enough to know how good it was as I have never used ruby otherwise. Intellij is also its own code base, not another fork of eclipse, like most IDEs out there. Intelij also has built in support for git, hg, github/bitbucket, pretty much any SQL dialect including SQLite (as well as SQL syntax checking ERD diagramming, and table editing). Unit testing integration for python, php, javascript, java. Django support (and for templates), Google App Engine (python and java), jQuery support, javadoc support, epydoc/restructured support, phpdoc support, jsdoc support, and some of the popular php frameworks. I could go on, but you can see it pretty much comes with everything one needs (and what one does not need can be disabled from plugins). If it does not come with it, open a feature request and they'll probably add it later.

Other IDEs I have used:

- Aptana (PHP, html/js, css, python). It's really a fork of eclipse with some additional features. If you want a free IDE, it's better than eclipse, but not quite as good as intellij.

- Visual Studio (2005, 2010, 2012). Great if you are doing C# or F# and combine it with Jetbrain's Resharper. Not as fond of it for other languages though. I've heard JS support is also very good now, but my web development is all scripting languages like Python and PHP so it does not help me much.

- NuSphere's PHPed. A good natively compiled IDE for PHP and web, but development kind of lags behind other IDEs and a few bugs that were never fixed when I used it would constantly annoy me. Also, only Windows unless you do WINE (it worked well enough on WINE though).

- Eclipse. Eclipse interface is clunky and honestly, it's slower than Intellij or any of its derivative cousins. Aptana improves on it though. Used Eclipse for a couple of years before finding Aptana and then moving onto Intellij.

It's not just about the IDE though, jetbrains in general is a great company. Despite English not being their first language for many employees, they have awesome customer service and are very up front about their road map and interact with their users directly.

I've used some commercial IDEs in the past, such as NuSphere's PHPed (which was a decent IDE at the time, not sure how it is now). PHPed's developers did not speak English as their primary language either, but they did not have anywhere close to the same level of interaction and support. Jetbrain's bug tracker is open for anyone to report on and they actually fix stuff you report (filed a few reports over the past few years, all were eventually fixed).

Maybe I'm just getting overly excited over what any decent company should be doing in the first place. However, many IDE vendors do not seem to do that overly well. Having confidence in the developers of your IDE is important (at least to me) and that they are listening to their customers/users.

[girvo]

Komodo IDE 7. Seriously the best IDEA I've ever used for dynamic languages. Their CodeIntel (think intellisense for Php) is worth it alone.

[apalmer]

Definitely wouldn't be worth it just for using a Visual Studio plug in for Python development. And I am of the camp that thinks visual studio is the best IDE out there.

[bdesimone]

Thank you for actually answering the question I asked!

[krallin]

Specifically for Python / Django development, PyCharm is very good: http://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/

[bdesimone]

Indeed, I agree but that wasn't my question. I was specifically wondering what developing on windows, in VS felt like for developers who are accustomed to using *nix based environments and tools like Pycharm/Eclipse/ST2 etc.

[kayoone]

Whats the downside anyway ? Since i run all my code on linux VMs, i dont really care for the OS i run my editor in. Windows7 + cygwin and dev enviroment VMs are fine for me, dont see any downside to using OSX for example.

[taude]

I believe you're doing it right with the Linux VMs. That's how I roll and it makes me pretty indifferent to my host environment whether it's OS X or Win. Currently on OS X, but might be switching back to Windows. My dev process will likely remain unchanged...

[ivix]

I moved mostly from Linux and vim to windows + pycharm. Still deploy to Linux. I use cygwin for commandline work. Its gone a lot better than expected. Pip works, django works, local MySQL works, much to my amazement.

[yngccc]

dunno about python, but good debugging support is a huge plus for IDE.