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As programmers we don't want to reinvent the wheel so code use and using tested libraries/frameworks are in everyone's best interest (usually). However if you don't know that the "wheel" has been invented you don't know that you should look at library/framework X to help with your current problem.

Specially in Python if you were about to start a large project where would you go/research first to see if a solution to some of your requirements doesn't already exist. Obviously Google but do you have a system of steps you take when researching? Sites you check first, community sites you inquire with? Then having found a solution what steps do you take to make sure it "works" beyond running tests for it? If there are no tests does it instantly get removed from the maybe list?

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What's wrong with docs.python.org? Isn't that the standard starting point? "Community sites" is impossibly broad, unless you can narrow the problem domain down a little. A community for numerical calculations will be different from the communities for each web application framework. "what steps do you take to make sure it "works" beyond running tests for it"? What other steps can there possibly be beyond testing? –  S.Lott Feb 22 '12 at 16:50
I start by searching StackOverflow. –  user16764 Feb 22 '12 at 17:44
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In addition to http://pypi.python.org/pypi (also referred to as The Cheeseshop), I'd suggest searching both Github (http://github.com) and Bitbucket (http://bitbucket.org). There are often really good packages available that haven't yet been distributed through PyPI (though these are often bleeding-edge).

If you really want easy-to-use and stable packages, I'd start looking at RTD (http://readthedocs.org/). Usually, the packages that are well-documented are also used by more people and tend to be more stable.

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I have not made Python for a while. But when I did I use to use this site (and no Google) to find Python modules : http://pypi.python.org/pypi

You can easily know if the packages are up to date. By the way you never can be 100% sure they have no bugs until you made your own tests.

Hope it will help!

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