PyCharm for your Python software development with smart code completion, error highlighting, and automated code refactoring. Get framework-specific support for Django, Flask, Google App Engine, Pyramid, and web2py.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
Python has recently gained quite a popularity amongst the programming languages. It is popular for its wide application in web development, machine learning, data science, and desktop application development.
Image Source: Most wanted language – Python, Stackoverflow Developer Survey 2020
IDEs are the Integrated Development Environment to make your developer experience smooth and facilitate the developer tools utilization. There are so many IDEs for python and it can be confusing to choose which one to settle for?
It can be the best option for you. Let’s deep dive in and explore what PyCharm has to offer.
2. PyCharm – Why Should You Choose?
It is the most popular IDE for writing Python code. A large community of Python developers prefer using PYCHARM for development, we will see the reasons and why you should start using PyCharm if you are a python developer.
It is a cross-platform IDE, developed by JetBrains, first released in 2010. It is for intermediate to advance python developers. Some of the popular companies using it are Twitter, HP, Telephonic, etc.
Let’s understand why PyCharm is popular more than other programming languages:
2.1 Quick and Smart Search:
It contains the smart feature of searching files or text in any file. It takes only one click to find out part of the text and it gets easy to modify the specific line of codes.
2.2 In-built VCS Management:
There is a provision of using GIT, svn, VIM and other VCS tools within the editor itself. It has easy UI for al git commands like diff, pull, push, merge, blame etc.
2.3 Automatic Code Completion:
Its automatic code completion helps to write correct code faster. If there is any code error, it highlights it. It gives suggestions on what you might be going to use. It makes writing code smooth.
2.4 Run Code
You can run .py files in the PyCharm terminal itself. It provides its terminal to interact with code and test it. Having a terminal in IDE itself helps in running Git commands, installing packages, set file permissions easily, and more like this without switching to Windows.
2.5 Debugging, Testing and Profiling
It contains powerful debuggers for Python as well as JavaScript. You can easily create your tests and even a GUI based test runner because the PyCharm debugger comes with a graphical UI.
This provides complete control of code in your hands. It makes the life of programmers easy.
2.6 Go Live
Live Editing Preview lets you see the code changes in the editor and browser. You don’t need to save your code, again and again, PyCharm automatically saves your code after finishing lines of code.
2.7 Python Frameworks
It is the solution to all your setup problems. It provides development frameworks for different frameworks like Django, Flask, Google App Engine.
You can create your projects, and all the necessary files like manage.py, Django templates, and other tools will be included.
2.8 Local History
Like in Git, you can track the previous changes in code. In PYCHARM you can see the history of work you have done in PyCharm. If you want to edit something in history, it gives you options to rollback.
These small features make PYCHARM more usable and help the programmer to focus only on code instead of worrying about code.
2.9 Ace Jump
This plugin helps the developers to jump on the particular section of code in the editor. It will quickly navigate to that specific code.
2.10 Database Integration
In PyCharm, you can work with many relational databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and SQL Server.
Developers can run SQL queries, alter table data, analyze schemas, etc. PyCharm supports easy database integration with other programming languages with its library SQLAlchemy.
2.11 Software Testing
After software development, the most important part is testing. It helps developers to perform unit testing using popular Python testing frameworks such as Attest, Nose, and Doctests. It also provides the option to run single or multiple files and perform tests.
2.12 Create Plugins
PyCharm offers a platform for developers to create their custom plugins for adding more features to IDE. There is a marketplace that has thousands of plugins. It extends the functionality of JetBrains IDE. It enhances the developer’s productivity.
There are plugins, for example, preview markdown, and format code. It extends the functionality of JetBrains IDE. It enhances the developer’s productivity. There are plugins, for example, preview markdown, and format code.
2.13 Collaborate Work
What is better than ease of collaboration with other developers or friends on a project. PyCharm makes it easier. We have seen some of the reasons developers love using PyCharm. It boosts productivity, code quality, and has high community support.
3. PyCharm VS Code Editor:
| PyCharm | Other Code Editor |
| Python-specific IDE. Pycharm has a large memory consumption due to its large features. It has a recommended 1GB RAM to operate. It may lag with multiple programs and ML models training.There are light-weight editors with lesser system requirements such as Sublime Text, Visual Studio code. | They can be for multiple programming languages such as Java, C++ and JavaScript. |
| It has better autocomplete features. | They struggle with autocomplete at times. |
| The professional edition is not free. Yet there is a community version of PyCharm available for free but with lesser features. You can avail free tools of JetBrains via the Student Developer Pack. | There are multiple open source free Editors. |
| It is great for a professional developer working on an application in production. | They have comparatively lesser professional support such as performance profiling and remote debugging. |
| Pycharm has a large memory consumption due to its large features. It has a recommended 1GB RAM to operate. It may lag with multiple programs and ML models training. | There are light-weight editors with lesser system requirements such as Sublime text, Visual Studio code. |
4. Why PyCharm for Machine Learning?
- If you are a machine learning enthusiast, you definitely need PyCharm.
- Writing Machine Learning algorithms means writing a lot of complicated code, and requirements of different Python Libraries.
- You can be saved by a good IDE like PyCharm to write beautiful code without any trouble.
- PyCharm supports different machine learning libraries like Scikit-Learn, Matplotlib, Numpy, Pandas, and many more. This makes it best for Machine Learning.
- There are features like Matplotlib interactive mode which works in Python as well as the debugger console.
- It is troublesome to install all packages required for development on Windows, Pycharm makes it a lot easier to install packages and work with them.
5. Conclusion
There are other Python IDEs like Spyder, but I recommend PyCharm. We have seen the features it offers, which are getting improvised by the PyCharm maintainers, and new features are added often. It makes code readable, and easy to analyse.
With PyCharm, one can do anything related to Python in a single place blessing the life of Python developers. If you love to create Python projects you can’t ignore PyCharm anymore.
