Jupyter v. VS Code — The Petty IDE Battle That Really Shouldn’t Matter

But since it does: 3+ years’ of development opinion from a data engineer who works in both Jupyter Notebook and VS Code IDEs.

Currently job searching? Give yourself an edge by developing a personal project using my free 5-page project ideation guide.

I’ve never done as much non-verbal communication as I do at work. Which is weird because for 3+ years I’ve worked remotely. So, often, instead of a snarky comment or an eye roll, a Slack post will receive emojis. And GIFs. So many GIFs. And, despite cliche and foundational technical arguments like macs vs. PC or tabs vs. spaces, nothing prompts both fervent discussion and a flood of GIFs like the comparison of development environments, in particular Jupyter Notebook vs. VS Code (the mere fact that “vs” is in VS code may naturally invite confrontation).

You may have found yourself in a course or professional environment that all but mandates one or the other. Unfortunately, for those of us who learn or refine programming skills in a professional environment, our IDEs are often a result of this prompting, which ingrains a certain bias toward the world of available options. In grad school, when learning Python initially, I was only given access to PyCharm. So, guess what I used for nearly a year before I was given access to Jupyter through Anaconda-Navigator (an IDE generator I still have installed on my personal…