that you use idle for this book' exercises if you're just starting outunless you are already familiar with and prefer command-line-based development mode there arehowevera handful of alternative ides for python developerssome of which are substantially more powerful and robust than idle apart from idlehere are some of python' most commonly used ideseclipse and pydev eclipse is an advanced open source ide gui originally developed as java ideeclipse also supports python development when you install the pydev (or similarplug-in eclipse is popular and powerful option for python developmentand it goes well beyond idle' feature set it includes support for code completionsyntax highlightingsyntax analysisrefactoringdebuggingand more its downsides are that it is large system to install and may require shareware extensions for some features (this may vary over timestillwhen you are ready to graduate from idlethe eclipse/pydev combination is worth your attention komodo full-featured development environment gui for python (and other languages)komodo includes standard syntax coloringtext editingdebuggingand other features in additionkomodo offers many advanced features that idle does notincluding project filessource-control integrationand regular-expression debugging at this writingkomodo is not freebut see the web for its current status-it is available at activepython distribution package mentioned in appendix netbeans ide for python netbeans is powerful open source development environment gui with support for many advanced features for python developerscode completionautomatic indentation and code colorizationeditor hintscode foldingrefactoringdebuggingcode coverage and testingprojectsand more it may be used to develop both cpython and jython code like eclipsenetbeans requires installation steps beyond those of the included idle guibut it is seen by many as more than worth the effort search the web for the latest information and links pythonwin pythonwin is free windows-only ide for python that ships as part of activestate' activepython distribution (and may also be fetched separately from www python org resourcesit is roughly like idlewith handful of useful windows-specific extensions addedfor examplepythonwin has support for com objects todayidle is probably more advanced than pythonwin (for instanceidle' dual-process architecture often prevents it from hanginghoweverpythonwin still offers tools for windows developers that idle does not see www activestate com for more information wingvisual studioand others other ides are popular among python developers tooincluding the mostly commercial wing idemicrosoft visual studio via plug-inand pycharmpyscrip how you run programs