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Ide or code editor confusion

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sigmaph...@gmail.com

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Jul 21, 2016, 9:57:48 AM7/21/16
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I'm learning Python and something is really unclear on the chapter im on.

So Python has its own IDE to write code but now it's talking about "code editors"

My confusion is so I need a code editor like Sublime text? Is that what Python IDE is for?

Chris Angelico

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Jul 21, 2016, 10:07:42 AM7/21/16
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You can use any text editor to write your Python code. If you're using
nothing except Python, IDLE is excellent, but if you work with several
different languages, you may prefer Sublime, or Atom, or SciTE, or GNU
Nano, or something else. You can pick up pretty much any text editor
(not a word processor, and not Windows Notepad, but virtually anything
else will do) and use that to work on your code.

Without knowing what chapter of what book you're reading, I can't
advise any further.

ChrisA

sigmaph...@gmail.com

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Jul 21, 2016, 10:22:57 AM7/21/16
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Beginning Python: using Python 2.6 and Python 3.1. By James Payne

Part II.

But I think that answered my question. Great because au was worried

MRAB

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Jul 21, 2016, 10:30:38 AM7/21/16
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On 2016-07-21 15:07, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 11:56 PM, <sigmaph...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You can use any text editor to write your Python code. If you're using
> nothing except Python, IDLE is excellent, but if you work with several
> different languages, you may prefer Sublime, or Atom, or SciTE, or GNU
> Nano, or something else. You can pick up pretty much any text editor
> (not a word processor, and not Windows Notepad, but virtually anything
> else will do) and use that to work on your code.
>
> Without knowing what chapter of what book you're reading, I can't
> advise any further.
>
The key is that the editor should work with "plain text".

A "code editor" is one that works with plain text, but has been designed
with programming in mind. It will have useful features such as syntax
colouring (different colours for reserved words, strings, ...), case
conversion, easy indentation of multiple lines, and so on.

Jussi Piitulainen

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Jul 21, 2016, 10:31:59 AM7/21/16
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You need a code editor that you are comfortable with. If you are already
comfortable with this IDE thing that you talk about, you can use it as
your code editor.

You can also use some other editor. If you like. If you are curious.
Even one that doesn't know about Python (but those who claim to edit
code by moving magnets over the hard disk are only joking. That's not
done).

Chris Angelico

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Jul 21, 2016, 10:38:10 AM7/21/16
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Ugh, that's extremely old now. The current versions of Python are 2.7
(first released in 2010, and getting periodic bugfix releases) and 3.5
(released 2015, and also getting bugfix releases). I strongly
recommend you use a newer version - either 3.4 or 3.5, one of which
will be available in most Linux repositories. You can always grab the
latest from python.org.

If you can't find a book that makes use of 3.4+, ask around; there are
quite a few books which have been updated to that. The feature
difference between 3.1 and 3.5 is huge.

ChrisA

Lawrence D’Oliveiro

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Aug 4, 2016, 3:24:03 AM8/4/16
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On Friday, July 22, 2016 at 2:38:10 AM UTC+12, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 22, 2016 at 12:22 AM, sigmaphine1914 wrote:
>> Beginning Python: using Python 2.6 and Python 3.1. By James Payne
>>
>> Part II.
>
> Ugh, that's extremely old now.

That’s why I’ve come to the conclusion it’s a waste of time buying books on computing topics. They start to reek of decay while they’re still on the shelf.

Michael Torrie

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Aug 4, 2016, 2:36:45 PM8/4/16
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Except for old Unix books! I've got an old book on sed and awk that
will likely be in date for years to come! There's also an old book on
vi, another on regular expression. So some things are invaluable
references. Moving targets like Python, that's another story of course!

Chris Angelico

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Aug 4, 2016, 2:48:40 PM8/4/16
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On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 4:36 AM, Michael Torrie <tor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 08/04/2016 01:23 AM, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
> Except for old Unix books! I've got an old book on sed and awk that
> will likely be in date for years to come! There's also an old book on
> vi, another on regular expression. So some things are invaluable
> references. Moving targets like Python, that's another story of course!

Anything that focuses on specifics will get out of date, but the
generalities don't. Here in the 2010s, I'm passing on to my students
design advice (eg relational database schemas, laying out program
code) that I learned from my father in the 1990s, and which he learned
in the 1970s, and which probably have been passed down since the
invention of programming, back in about 4004 BC. So there's often
*something* you can learn from an old book - but I still wouldn't
recommend a novice start out by picking up something that starts with
the proper way to install hard drive platters in an IBM System/360,
even if it does have a lot of sage wisdom in it :)

ChrisA

Lawrence D’Oliveiro

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Aug 6, 2016, 9:13:22 PM8/6/16
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On Friday, August 5, 2016 at 6:36:45 AM UTC+12, Michael Torrie wrote:
> On 08/04/2016 01:23 AM, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
>> That’s why I’ve come to the conclusion it’s a waste of time buying books
>> on computing topics. They start to reek of decay while they’re still on
>> the shelf.
>
> Except for old Unix books!

I don’t think this one <https://www.amazon.com/Software-Tools-Brian-W-Kernighan/dp/020103669X> has aged well.

> I've got an old book on sed and awk that will likely be in date for years
> to come!

I may have used sed, but I could never see the point in awk--everything it could do, I could do just as concisely in Perl, and more.

> There's also an old book on vi, another on regular expression.

Does your book on regular expressions mention character classes, for example <http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/grep.1.html>?

> So some things are invaluable references.

I would say that applies to more fundamental principles and theory, rather than the detailed functions of particular pieces of software.

> Moving targets like Python, that's another story of course!

When even bash comes out with new versions with major new features, you realize that everything is a moving target...
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