Choosing IDE for Python? VS Code versus PyCharm!
This story is about summary description of 2 IDEs and relevant comparison of them.
Almost every developer needs a lot of auxiliary tools when writing code. This is logical, because there are many dependencies and features in the structure of professional development that you should keep in mind. And that’s what the IDE is for. IDE is a powerful integrated development environment that allows you not only to write lines of code, but also to integrate other services such as git, copilot and many others. In this text you will find my thoughts on a couple of IDEs from them.
I’ve been working with Python for over a year now, and I really liked this language. It has taken its place in industry and in academia. In addition, it is currently the most popular programming language, according to the 2018 StackOverflow developer survey. And at first, for me, there was a huge question, which IDE to use when working. There are 2 main IDE’s for Python — VS code and PyCharm, and I’ve used both of them over the last year, and here I’ll describe what pros and cons exist for them.
Common Features
Both editors provide a wide range of Python development features that every developer needs in their standard set of tools, such as:
- Intelligent code completion
- Full text search, including support for regexes
- Syntax highlighting and bracket matching
- Git integration
- Code formatting and autopep8 support
- Code linting using pylint
- Debugging and code inspection tools
- User defined code snippets
So there is not much difference between the IDEs here )(
Ease of use
PyCharm has a lot of features that most people don’t need regularly (advanced code refactoring tools), and it’s confusing at first, figuring out where to find configuration options if you haven’t used it before. But, to be honest, you get used to it in 3 tutorials and soon you reveal more and more potential of the development environment. I note that I didn’t even know about many functions, which is also a plus of PyCharm.
Setting up VS Code is much easier to understand. All you have to do is type Ctrl+ Shift + P, and a palette of commands will appear in which you can search for everything you would like to do, and it will appear in the results. On the other hand, when configuring some plugins, I ran into problems whose solutions were buried deep. I even got to the point of reinstalling directories and other things, but if you don’t want too much and follow the ready-made tutorials, you will only have advantages.
Performance
Even when running the IDE, PyCharm consumes about 1 GB of memory on my machine, while VS Code remains less than 400 megabytes in almost all cases. VS code consumes significant memory only when I open a project with a lot of files and add-ons. On the other hand, on such large projects that are system-demanding, PyCharm shows better performance because it is better adapted.
According to performance criteria, VS Code easily surpasses PyCharm. Since VS Code doesn’t try to be a full-fledged IDE and keeps it simple as a text editor, the amount of memory, startup time, and overall responsiveness of VS Code is much better than PyCharm.
Extensibility
PyCharm is part of the JetBrains family of ideas, and they all provide extensibility with plugins. Currently, PyCharm has almost 3,000 extensions listed on the JetBrains website.
VS Code, on the other hand, is designed as a simple editor that can be converted into a full-fledged IDE using extensions. All Python support (including syntax highlighting, debugging, and code completion) is just one extension. VS Code has an extension for almost everything, and it’s very easy for developers to create their own. All these extensions can be found in VS Code Marketplace. This means that VS code turns out to be much more extensible than PyCharm.
Price
PyCharm costs about $200 a year. There is a community version of PyCharm that is free for commercial use, but it lacks many features (such as remote debugging support, extended Django support, and JavaScript and CSS support) that make PyCharm attractive. However, there is various support for students, academics, etc. who open a professional PyCharm for free.
On the other hand, VS Code is FOSS (Free and Open Source software). Simply great )(
Finally
PyCharm is an excellent full-fledged development environment with many additions and integrations. It is also worth noting that this is a commercial product, so you can count on regular support for your money. On the other hand, VS Code is an open free software with much more adaptive capabilities. In terms of functionality, VS Code is almost as good as PyCharm, but there are also questions here.
In general, I would say that PyCharm is better suited for full-fledged commercial developments, because it is there that the full potential of IDE is revealed. For academic or local use, there will be practically no difference between PyCharm and VS code, so if you do not have the opportunity to purchase a PyCharm, then this will not be a problem.
Personally, I liked the PyCharm logic more and now I use it on a regular basis. I think that for the most part it’s a matter of taste and in order to decide, you need to try it first. I hope that this article will help you in choosing, and if you want more analysis from the technical world, then let me know. In the meantime, you can rate my other articles and subscribe so as not to miss new ones.
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