PyCharm mostly brings IDE features to the table: context-dependent auto completion, far better navigation, static analysis ("that thing doesn't seem to have thi

PyCharm mostly brings IDE features to the table: context-dependent auto completion, far better navigation, static analysis ("that thing doesn't seem to have this method"), refactoring (for Python mostly moving and renaming; the refactoring engine of IDEA for Java is probably the most advanced on this planet... it's ridiculously good). Also, being built on the IDEA platform PyCharm has superb support for language injections, eg. CSS in HTML in a template language is not a problem and handled correctly (highlighting, completion, annotation etc.). Another advantage is that the IDEA IDEs are all very similar in general usage, so if one is also working with another IDEA IDE (for me that's mainly Java and CLion) then no time learning a whole different set of shortcuts or something like that is lost. I couldn't replace a shell with an IDE, but they do have tasks and stuff like that, might be good enough. Regarding database, when you're using the ORM it does matter far less for development; I almost always just use SQLite. Some projects do require advanced features of postgres, and would not work with SQLite. In those cases I just start a postgres instance ad-hoc.