Hi Brian, I'm sure I don't qualify as an "experienced Python programmer", but I write lots of code usually for statistical analysis (via numarray) or for GUI work.
The way I work is to use an editor and Idle for interactive testing of small routines. My choice of editor is SciTE. I'll have different modules (both working and testing modules) in a range of different tabs and use the built-in execute code function (F5) to run and check errors. Idle is then used to test small functions and explore when I need to. The editor gets more of the GUI work and Idle gets more of the statistics work - the ability to test routines on the fly is enormously helpful and quite a productive way to work. Say I was looking at some linear algebra and I want an SSCP matrix. Just enter the data into variable 'X' then: >>> Xd = X - average(X) # deviations matrix >>> Xdt = transpose(Xd) >>> SSCP = dot(Xdt, Xd) and there's my matrix. However, the useful thing is that the transposed X matrix is still there so if I go on to a multiple regression, I can use it there too. For statistics, it's tremendously useful, particularly if the analysis doesn't go as planned (eg, presence of outliers) and further exploration is needed. Perhaps later I need the variances of each variable: >>> diagonal(SSCP) And out they appear without having to go through an entire program. Even though Python is slower than well-written Fortran, the interactive nature can make statistical analysis quicker. All the best! Alan. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
