Python

I love Python. Why? It makes programming fun! I have no intention of getting into heavy python-evangelization (many smarter people can do that much better than me). This document is just a brief run down of my standard python setup (tools, library, etc.).

Platform independent

Whatever system you are using this should be usable!

• Python - standard distribution (I try to always upgrade to the most recent one and keep pace with the core developpers effort to improve Python's efficiency)
• iPython - pretty cool and useful interpreter/shell/interactive debugger/...
• matplotlib - stunning library to chart/graph/display quantitative information
• NumPy - required by matplotlib but I am sure I'll end up using it for other purposes (that and SciPy)
• BeautifulSoup - html scrapping lib (which I initially used to retrieve information on wool future prices from the SFE website)
• PMW - I bought Grayson's Python and Tkinter programming, it is a must have if you want to practice with the book.
• PIL - must have image processing library
• mxODBC + MySQLdb + pySQLite - database material ;)
• ctypes - which should be making it into Python 2.5
• mxDateTime - I have been told it is the best platform independent way to deal with dates in Python (not worth questioning).
• easy_install deserves to be extracted from the list as it is a tool to install apps/packages/etc. based on setuptools.

Platform specific (Windows)

Yes I work most of the time on a Windows box, not proud nor ashame of it ... a computer is a tool! I don't think that makes me a lesser geek ;)

• pywin32 - Mark Hammond's master piece (I own his book but not sure I really need it because I try not to do platform specific coding if I can avoid it).
• py2exe - from a python program to a windows executable in too many steps but ...
• icons - how cool are these ! They are so cool they made it into 2.5 ;)