5 ms·

9 reasons you should be using PyCharm

16 points by Perados 10y ago

dozzie 10y ago
Reason one: I write in half a dozen of languages, and PyCharm supports but one of them. Yes, totally.
- hartator 10y ago
  Yeah, that's probably a good point even if you are downvoted. Plus performance is usually bad compared to Sublime and a lot of muscle memory can't be translated easily to another editor. Finally, a lot of integrated tools (Like SQL or Git integration) reach quickly their limit and you have to use the regular tools/CLI anyway.
- Chyzwar 10y ago
  Nope, you can install any language support. You can have the same support for Java as Intellij.
  - dozzie 10y ago
    > Nope, you can install any language support. OK. Show me support for OCaml, Rust, Erlang, shell, make, or CFEngine. Granted, I only write in half of these, but I'm not that far away from the rest.
    - xtanx 10y ago
      rust: https://github.com/intellij-rust/intellij-rust https://github.com/intellij-rust/intellij-rust erlang: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7083?pr=idea https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7083?pr=idea bash: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/4230?pr=idea https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/4230?pr=idea
      - dozzie 10y ago
        What about the rest? And Erlang plugin doesn't seem to give much that would suit Erlang development (syntax highlighting and identifier completion is not much, I would still need to go to command line for about every operation).
        brianwawok 10y ago
        Guess the .1% of programmers who write Erlang aren't the target market?
        dozzie 10y ago
        Of course they are not. But why then am I supposed to be using PyCharm, as the title says?
    - user5994461 10y ago
      Just open one file of these, PyCharm will display a nice popup "A plugin is available to support <x>. Would you like to get it?" Yes! It worked for ini, dockerfile and terraform HCL (which I consider more exotic than the languages you gave). Not sure whether shell and Makefile were a plugin or already present out of the box.
j2kun 10y ago
For in-editor git commands, I use vim-gitgutter. It's seriously cleaned up my commit history by letting me stage individual hunks of code, while still letting me implement changes in a stream-of-consciousness order. https://github.com/airblade/vim-gitgutter https://github.com/airblade/vim-gitgutter
wittekm 10y ago
I'd just like to give a shout-out to Jetbrains for being really responsive on their bug tracker! I've reported a couple bugs about PEP 484 type comments and they've acknowledged or fixed them usually within a week.
TheAuditor 10y ago
I can get most of that done with vim and the shell is just a ctrl-z away. Not to mention every languge eer made would work fine with it.
- Ao7bei3s 10y ago
  I've used vim all the time for a decade and PyCharm on and off for a few years. No, you can't. Every one of the features mentioned in the article is just so far ahead of what vim's equivalent has to offer, if there even is one. No, regex based search/replace doesn't count as refactoring support. Vims omnicompletion is a joke. It also doesn't handle multi-language files (e.g. SQL like in the article) at all. And Vim is limited by its strictly monospace UI without good overlay support. The integrated debugger is so much nicer to use than raw pdb, and WinPDB sucks for navigation. And there are so many time-saving little features, like the auto-import quickfix. And it takes a lot of work to get even half-baked versions of all the features in vim, because you have to get every one individually. IntelliJ with Python plugin (instead of standalone PyCharm) has support for all very many, and certainly all popular, languages. And it's not like in Vim-land, where "support" mostly means "syntax highlighting and that's it". Vim is an awesome text editor though.
  - carsongross 10y ago
    There is a vim plugin for pycharm, rubymine, intellij and friends: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/164?pr=idea https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/164?pr=idea I use it on and off, when I miss vi, in order to remember why I don't use vi anymore.
bobosha 10y ago
how about vs code? I am a recent convert and loving it.
hprotagonist 10y ago
Jetbrains is a lovely company. PyCharm is a nice IDE. ReSharper is _required_ if you want to be on the .NET stack and not go insane. They hand out open-source and academic research licenses under very reasonable conditions. What's not to love?
Grue3 10y ago
Or you can use Emacs for free. Subscription based pricing model is a joke.
- guitarbill 10y ago
  > Subscription based pricing model is a joke. Agreed. I mean I don't mind buying software I use often and professionally (e.g. Sublime). I guess the way to look at it is you're paying for bug-fixes and new features as a Service. Still leaves a bad taste in my mouth though. Sublime Text 3 + Anaconda [0] has enough features. And I never use a debugger. The reason being, if you can't debug it from logs in development, how are you going to debug it in production? [0] https://damnwidget.github.io/anaconda/ https://damnwidget.github.io/anaconda/
- brianwawok 10y ago
  PyCharm is good. Happy to subscribe for good programs. If I can write 1% better code with PyCharm it pays for itself in one week a year.
- Veratyr 10y ago
  It's not entirely subscription based. They have a "Perpetual Fallback License" for anyone who subscribes for more than a year ($89): https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What-is-perpetual-fallback-license- https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What... So you could say that you're "buying" the current version of the software as long as you buy yearly or subscribe for a year, they just don't say it that way.
  - guitarbill 10y ago
    Thanks for pointing this out, wasn't clear to me when I skimmed over the pricing. However, that page is also inaccurate as they've changed the versioning from v$X to $YYYY.$M [0]. I can't seem to figure out how long the "Perpetual Fallback License" will last without buying it and looking at my "account". All in all, it's really confusing :/ [0] https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2016/03/09/jetbrains-toolbox-release-and-versioning-changes/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2016/03/09/jetbrains-toolbox...
sunstone 10y ago
I'm quite happy with geany, which is free and oss.
teilo 10y ago
The remote support is the real gem. Integrated remote debugger. Completion even works for code running on a remote instance (e.g., via Vagrant).

16 points by Perados 10y ago

dozzie 10y ago

Reason one: I write in half a dozen of languages, and PyCharm supports but one of them. Yes, totally.

hartator 10y ago
Yeah, that's probably a good point even if you are downvoted. Plus performance is usually bad compared to Sublime and a lot of muscle memory can't be translated easily to another editor. Finally, a lot of integrated tools (Like SQL or Git integration) reach quickly their limit and you have to use the regular tools/CLI anyway.
Chyzwar 10y ago
Nope, you can install any language support. You can have the same support for Java as Intellij.
- dozzie 10y ago
  > Nope, you can install any language support. OK. Show me support for OCaml, Rust, Erlang, shell, make, or CFEngine. Granted, I only write in half of these, but I'm not that far away from the rest.
  - xtanx 10y ago
    rust: https://github.com/intellij-rust/intellij-rust https://github.com/intellij-rust/intellij-rust erlang: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7083?pr=idea https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/7083?pr=idea bash: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/4230?pr=idea https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/4230?pr=idea
    - dozzie 10y ago
      What about the rest? And Erlang plugin doesn't seem to give much that would suit Erlang development (syntax highlighting and identifier completion is not much, I would still need to go to command line for about every operation).
      - brianwawok 10y ago
        Guess the .1% of programmers who write Erlang aren't the target market?
        dozzie 10y ago
        Of course they are not. But why then am I supposed to be using PyCharm, as the title says?
  - user5994461 10y ago
    Just open one file of these, PyCharm will display a nice popup "A plugin is available to support <x>. Would you like to get it?" Yes! It worked for ini, dockerfile and terraform HCL (which I consider more exotic than the languages you gave). Not sure whether shell and Makefile were a plugin or already present out of the box.

j2kun 10y ago

For in-editor git commands, I use vim-gitgutter. It's seriously cleaned up my commit history by letting me stage individual hunks of code, while still letting me implement changes in a stream-of-consciousness order. https://github.com/airblade/vim-gitgutter https://github.com/airblade/vim-gitgutter

wittekm 10y ago

I'd just like to give a shout-out to Jetbrains for being really responsive on their bug tracker! I've reported a couple bugs about PEP 484 type comments and they've acknowledged or fixed them usually within a week.

TheAuditor 10y ago

I can get most of that done with vim and the shell is just a ctrl-z away. Not to mention every languge eer made would work fine with it.

Ao7bei3s 10y ago
I've used vim all the time for a decade and PyCharm on and off for a few years. No, you can't. Every one of the features mentioned in the article is just so far ahead of what vim's equivalent has to offer, if there even is one. No, regex based search/replace doesn't count as refactoring support. Vims omnicompletion is a joke. It also doesn't handle multi-language files (e.g. SQL like in the article) at all. And Vim is limited by its strictly monospace UI without good overlay support. The integrated debugger is so much nicer to use than raw pdb, and WinPDB sucks for navigation. And there are so many time-saving little features, like the auto-import quickfix. And it takes a lot of work to get even half-baked versions of all the features in vim, because you have to get every one individually. IntelliJ with Python plugin (instead of standalone PyCharm) has support for all very many, and certainly all popular, languages. And it's not like in Vim-land, where "support" mostly means "syntax highlighting and that's it". Vim is an awesome text editor though.
- carsongross 10y ago
  There is a vim plugin for pycharm, rubymine, intellij and friends: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/164?pr=idea https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/164?pr=idea I use it on and off, when I miss vi, in order to remember why I don't use vi anymore.

bobosha 10y ago

how about vs code? I am a recent convert and loving it.

hprotagonist 10y ago

Jetbrains is a lovely company. PyCharm is a nice IDE. ReSharper is _required_ if you want to be on the .NET stack and not go insane. They hand out open-source and academic research licenses under very reasonable conditions. What's not to love?

Grue3 10y ago

Or you can use Emacs for free. Subscription based pricing model is a joke.

guitarbill 10y ago
> Subscription based pricing model is a joke. Agreed. I mean I don't mind buying software I use often and professionally (e.g. Sublime). I guess the way to look at it is you're paying for bug-fixes and new features as a Service. Still leaves a bad taste in my mouth though. Sublime Text 3 + Anaconda [0] has enough features. And I never use a debugger. The reason being, if you can't debug it from logs in development, how are you going to debug it in production? [0] https://damnwidget.github.io/anaconda/ https://damnwidget.github.io/anaconda/
brianwawok 10y ago
PyCharm is good. Happy to subscribe for good programs. If I can write 1% better code with PyCharm it pays for itself in one week a year.
Veratyr 10y ago
It's not entirely subscription based. They have a "Perpetual Fallback License" for anyone who subscribes for more than a year ($89): https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What-is-perpetual-fallback-license- https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What... So you could say that you're "buying" the current version of the software as long as you buy yearly or subscribe for a year, they just don't say it that way.
- guitarbill 10y ago
  Thanks for pointing this out, wasn't clear to me when I skimmed over the pricing. However, that page is also inaccurate as they've changed the versioning from v$X to $YYYY.$M [0]. I can't seem to figure out how long the "Perpetual Fallback License" will last without buying it and looking at my "account". All in all, it's really confusing :/ [0] https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2016/03/09/jetbrains-toolbox-release-and-versioning-changes/ https://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2016/03/09/jetbrains-toolbox...

sunstone 10y ago

I'm quite happy with geany, which is free and oss.

teilo 10y ago

The remote support is the real gem. Integrated remote debugger. Completion even works for code running on a remote instance (e.g., via Vagrant).