One of the questions that programmers ask themselves, especially at the beginning of their career after what programming language to use, is what IDE or text editor will make their life better and more efficient. Regardless of the division of programming you do, whether it be web development, mobile/ desktop app development, or data science, your choice of IDE can make a huge difference in your ability to perform your job perfectly.
IDE and text editors are special development environments that programmers use to write code, test it, debug it, and upload it to GitHub — or any other Git hosting website. The right IDE or text editor should be flexible with most programming languages, makes it easy for you to sort and organize your files, and allows you to share them hassle-free.
Although many IDEs and text editors offer many properties and options to customize your development environment, there is no absolute best IDE. It all comes back to personal preferences. Some prefer full-on IDEs, while others like lightweight text editors.
This article will go through the top 6 Python IDEs and text editors often used by developers to make their workflow as smooth and as efficient as possible. So, if you’re looking for an IDE or a text editor to use, try these out until you find the one that matches your preferences.
№1: Sublime
Let’s start the list with my favorite text editor, Sublime. Sublime is a free text editor with a paid version that you can use to write, edit, and debug code writing in almost any programming language. When you first download and install Sublime, it’s a normal, somewhat boring text editor. But, Sublime’s strength comes from the add-ons you can install based on the programming language you intend to use.
The best part about Sublime add-ons is that you can customize them to match your requirements, from colors to overall look and connections to GitHub or other platforms. Setting up Sublime to be the perfect development environment will take you less than 30 minutes, and then you will be set to get to work. I will be writing an article soon about perfectly setting up Sublime for Python and data science.
№2: Spyder
Next on the list is Spyder, or the Scientific Python Development Environment. Spyder is a free and open-source IDE development, especially for Python. The best thing about Spyder is how lightweight it is compared to other IDEs. Spyder is a great option for data science and machine learning application because it has an interactive coding mode that allows you to analyze data in real-time.
Spyder also gives you the ability to inspect your entire codebase or divide it into sections to look into more closely. It also comes integrated with many commonly used data science packages like NumPy, Pandas, SciPy, and IPython. But, perhaps the strongest advantage of using an IDE is their integrated debugger. Spyder has a fantastic graphical debugger that can make your testing and bug locating tasks smooth and easy.
№3: Atom
Our next text editor is Atom. Atom is an open-source text editor developed by GitHub. Atom was developed to support many commonly used programming languages like Java and Ruby on Rails. However, it can be customized to provide a great user experience when writing Python code. In addition, Atom offers many plugins that can make it one of the best editors to use when building data science applications, such as the Data Atom package that allows you to execute SQL queries.
Aside from the great packages, one of the strengths of Atom is its community. Atom has one of the most active communities, which is always working on developing it and making it better for developers. Needless to say, Atom has great Git integration and can make your project version control tracking a piece of cake.
№4: Visual Studio Code
One of the most complete and widely used IDEs is Visual Studio Code (VS Code). VS Code is a very popular IDE used by Python, C, C#, and JavaScript developers. VS Code is free, lightweight, and open source. But it also offers a paid version for companies.
VS Code has many advantages, especially for beginners, as it provides hits and pointers to help when you define a function or a class or have a minor syntax error. VS Code also has good integration with PyLint, a Python linter used to check errors in the code. Another advantage of using VS Code is how easy it is to perform unit testing and REPL (read-evaluate-print loop) operations.
№5: PyCharm
If you’re learning Python, then you probably ended up with this IDE of our next one on the list. PyCharm is perhaps the most famous Python IDE out there. It was originally developed for Python, which is its biggest advantage. Although supporting multiple programming languages is good, having a specified IDE built for one language often provides a more robust development environment.
PyCharm offers many Python features like code/ error highlighting, Git integration, and a powerful graphical debugger. PyCharm code editor also allows you to customize its looks and color to match your comfort. Moreover, PyCharm has many plugins that you can add to extend its capabilities.
№6: Jupyter Notebooks
Last but definitely most popular in the data science community is Jupyter Notebooks. I couldn’t create this list without mentioning Jupyter Notebooks. Jupyter stands for Julia, Python, and R. Jupyter Notebooks is an open-source, free developing environment widely used in the programming community because it’s versatile, robust, and makes code files easy to share.
Jupyter Notebook gives the developer the ability to mix code bits with markdown, HTML, and LaTeX text. Jupyter notebook is a server-based structure that is easy to use and manipulate within the browser. Its powerful visualization ability due to the usage of IPython makes it a crowd favorite, especially when it comes to data science and quantum computing. The extension of Jupyter Notebook is Jupyter Lab which provides much more capabilities, like a visual debugger.
Takeaways
When you have to write, read, and debug hundreds and sometimes millions of lines of code, the IDE or text editor you chose to do so will make a big difference in your workflow. Having the correct IDE or text editor means you will have syntax highlighting, easy file editing and organization, and easy sharing and uploading of your work.
But, hundreds of IDEs and text editors are out there and trying them all is not the most feasible or time-efficient solution. So, in this article, I proposed to you 6 Python IDEs and text editors to chose from if you’re on the market for an IDE or text editor.
The 6 IDEs and text editors proposed in this article are versatile, flexible and offer a large selection of options you can use to customize to build an efficient, smooth work environment that will allow you to perform your tasks hassle-free. So, give these IDEs and text editors a try and see which one of them suits your personality and requirements best.
Information Technology & Finance Note 
Posted on Mei 23, 2021
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