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I've been doing Python development for a long time, since when 2.4 was the hottest thing. I've used the language for all sorts of things: web apps, web APIs, G

I've been doing Python development for a long time, since when 2.4 was the hottest thing. I've used the language for all sorts of things: web apps, web APIs, GUI tools, image manipulation, data processing and visualization, some data science, machine learning more recently. I've used many IDEs over the years, currently on PyCharm. Just to qualify the feedback. Pros: - It looks very pretty. - Some nice time saving features. Cons: - Mac only. - Subscription business model. - Having to tie the code to the IDE. Any one of the con's would be a deal breaker for me. Overall I'm not sure what the target market is. Maybe I'm just too used to having free and/or libre tooling.

lolinder 2y ago
> currently on PyCharm. ... Cons: Subscription business model. ... Any one of the con's would be a deal breaker for me. I'm curious to understand this better (as a fan of JetBrains): do you currently use PyCharm Community or does the JetBrains model not count as a subscription for you?
- vunderba 2y ago
  Chiming in here, Jetbrains is a subscription model, but with a very important qualifier in the form of a perpetual fallback license once you stop paying. It's an important distinction, and I wish more businesses would follow this model.
  - markus_zhang 2y ago
    Is the Jetbrain model basically the pricing model of early era (pre 2000s) IDEs? I remember back then developers had to pay for editors and compilers, which usually came with a huge amount of manuals. And then they could install patches until a new major version rolled out. I'm actually OK with that model, if they still ship manuals in paper.
    - vunderba 2y ago
      Yeah, I think it's pretty similar. I definitely remember purchasing copies of the software like Borland C++ / Visual Studio / etc. that would essentially cover the major version number and all patch related updates. Although personally, I don't know if jetbrains offers an actual physical copy (give me back the big box!).
      - markus_zhang 2y ago
        I love big boxes too! The manuals also show that developers really really know their products. It sucks that fast iteration is the new normal nowadays. It's not a bad thing if developers are eager to get their hands on a cutting edge feature, but I believe doing things slower but more thoroughly has its merit.
        pasc1878 2y ago
        No they did not show that. They showed that the project team for the tools included more than developers. It included qualified technical writers. It included project managers would would ensure that if somethiung was added there was a specification so that it could be documented. ie developers were not allowed to get away with only doing a partial job.
        markus_zhang 2y ago
        I think that's a good thing, developers not allowed to get away with partial job.
    - jamespo 2y ago
      Oracle RDBMS used to come with 20+ books, for PL/SQL, C bindings, Fortran etc etc... I don't want those days back!
      - markus_zhang 2y ago
        I'd like to take a cup of coffee, take out one of those books (not super interested in Oracle TBH but could be some other low level stuffs) and read it through. OK I know reality is much less appealing than that. But I still prefer paper books than .CHM help files than really online documents.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Yeah, I was wondering if that was it. Practically it still ends up being a subscription for me because I actually do want the updates, but I guess that's the point—it's my choice to keep paying because I like what they're doing. If I stop liking I can stop paying.
  - gcanyon 2y ago
    > perpetual fallback license Are you sure this isn't what Scripton is offering? From the pricing page: > All updates included while subscription is active That doesn't preclude the idea that what stops when your subscription ends is the updates, not use at all. But I genuinely don't know either way.
    - vunderba 2y ago
      Couple things. 1. Perpetual fallback licenses on SaaS products are (unfortunately) not terribly common - so if it's not explicitly stated then you can bet your bottom dollar that it's highly unlikely. 2. From the dev themselves in another part of this post, "The plan for now is just subscriptions. However, I would like to eventually have something like Jetbrains' "perpetual fallback license" where you can keep using up to a particular version after, say, a year of subscription".
      - hackermanai 2y ago
        > 1. Perpetual fallback licenses on SaaS products are (unfortunately) not terribly common - so if it's not explicitly stated then you can bet your bottom dollar that it's highly unlikely. I also think perpetual fallback licenses are great and will def use this for hackerman.ai text editor (when released later this year). I also wish devs would start offer one time payments again (especially for downloadable software).
      - gcanyon 2y ago
        re: 2: yep, I see that comment now...
  - PeterStuer 2y ago
    Techsmith does this as well and I love it. I'm still on a perfectly usable 5 year old version of Camtasia. https://www.techsmith.com/ https://www.techsmith.com/
- adamc 2y ago
  Not the OP, but I have a subscription to PyCharm through work and still think it's inferior to VSCode. And I don't love vscode... In general, subscriptions are a high bar for me. You typically pay for them year after year but see minimal improvements. Back when I was doing Java development, I paid for my own copy of Idea just to get to use something good. But I don't think I would do that for a subscription.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    > I have a subscription to PyCharm through work and still think it's inferior to VSCode I'm trying to figure out how anyone could think that. Every time I switch to VS Code I feel hamstrung. What do you find to be inferior?
    - Numerlor 2y ago
      While I also felt limited in vscode compared to pycharm, it definitely feels more polished. I've had some bugs in pycharm for years with no progress on their issue tracker, and new features feel a bit slopilly implemented. Also the built-in type checker is just bad
    - adamc 2y ago
      PyCharm is much more sluggish. And I have had a lot more luck using dev containers in VSCode than PyCharm. In general, I find the process of getting an interpretter set up much nicer in VSCode. Both work for Python syntax highlighting. But I've had several bugs in PyCharm that took several versions to get fixed. To be fair, individual extensions in VSCode can also have bugs, but I've generally found it easier to work around issues because it is less "bundled".
  - PeterStuer 2y ago
    I switched from VSCode to Pycharm a few years back. Both are very decent IDE's, but Pycharm feels to me more polished. Pycharm is like driving an automatic, whereas VSCode feels like driving manual. It is a tradeoff as always, so ymmv.
- nickserv 2y ago
  I use PyCharm community edition for personal/OSS projects. At work I do have the all products pack since we support multiple programming languages for our client libraries and custom integrations. My only major complaint with jetbrains is having a separate IDE for .NET vs everything else.
adamc 2y ago
I was interested, but Mac and subscription kill it for me. Good luck to them, though.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

lolinder 2y ago

> currently on PyCharm. ... Cons: Subscription business model. ... Any one of the con's would be a deal breaker for me. I'm curious to understand this better (as a fan of JetBrains): do you currently use PyCharm Community or does the JetBrains model not count as a subscription for you?

vunderba 2y ago
Chiming in here, Jetbrains is a subscription model, but with a very important qualifier in the form of a perpetual fallback license once you stop paying. It's an important distinction, and I wish more businesses would follow this model.
- markus_zhang 2y ago
  Is the Jetbrain model basically the pricing model of early era (pre 2000s) IDEs? I remember back then developers had to pay for editors and compilers, which usually came with a huge amount of manuals. And then they could install patches until a new major version rolled out. I'm actually OK with that model, if they still ship manuals in paper.
  - vunderba 2y ago
    Yeah, I think it's pretty similar. I definitely remember purchasing copies of the software like Borland C++ / Visual Studio / etc. that would essentially cover the major version number and all patch related updates. Although personally, I don't know if jetbrains offers an actual physical copy (give me back the big box!).
    - markus_zhang 2y ago
      I love big boxes too! The manuals also show that developers really really know their products. It sucks that fast iteration is the new normal nowadays. It's not a bad thing if developers are eager to get their hands on a cutting edge feature, but I believe doing things slower but more thoroughly has its merit.
      - pasc1878 2y ago
        No they did not show that. They showed that the project team for the tools included more than developers. It included qualified technical writers. It included project managers would would ensure that if somethiung was added there was a specification so that it could be documented. ie developers were not allowed to get away with only doing a partial job.
        markus_zhang 2y ago
        I think that's a good thing, developers not allowed to get away with partial job.
  - jamespo 2y ago
    Oracle RDBMS used to come with 20+ books, for PL/SQL, C bindings, Fortran etc etc... I don't want those days back!
    - markus_zhang 2y ago
      I'd like to take a cup of coffee, take out one of those books (not super interested in Oracle TBH but could be some other low level stuffs) and read it through. OK I know reality is much less appealing than that. But I still prefer paper books than .CHM help files than really online documents.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Yeah, I was wondering if that was it. Practically it still ends up being a subscription for me because I actually do want the updates, but I guess that's the point—it's my choice to keep paying because I like what they're doing. If I stop liking I can stop paying.
- gcanyon 2y ago
  > perpetual fallback license Are you sure this isn't what Scripton is offering? From the pricing page: > All updates included while subscription is active That doesn't preclude the idea that what stops when your subscription ends is the updates, not use at all. But I genuinely don't know either way.
  - vunderba 2y ago
    Couple things. 1. Perpetual fallback licenses on SaaS products are (unfortunately) not terribly common - so if it's not explicitly stated then you can bet your bottom dollar that it's highly unlikely. 2. From the dev themselves in another part of this post, "The plan for now is just subscriptions. However, I would like to eventually have something like Jetbrains' "perpetual fallback license" where you can keep using up to a particular version after, say, a year of subscription".
    - hackermanai 2y ago
      > 1. Perpetual fallback licenses on SaaS products are (unfortunately) not terribly common - so if it's not explicitly stated then you can bet your bottom dollar that it's highly unlikely. I also think perpetual fallback licenses are great and will def use this for hackerman.ai text editor (when released later this year). I also wish devs would start offer one time payments again (especially for downloadable software).
    - gcanyon 2y ago
      re: 2: yep, I see that comment now...
- PeterStuer 2y ago
  Techsmith does this as well and I love it. I'm still on a perfectly usable 5 year old version of Camtasia. https://www.techsmith.com/ https://www.techsmith.com/
adamc 2y ago
Not the OP, but I have a subscription to PyCharm through work and still think it's inferior to VSCode. And I don't love vscode... In general, subscriptions are a high bar for me. You typically pay for them year after year but see minimal improvements. Back when I was doing Java development, I paid for my own copy of Idea just to get to use something good. But I don't think I would do that for a subscription.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > I have a subscription to PyCharm through work and still think it's inferior to VSCode I'm trying to figure out how anyone could think that. Every time I switch to VS Code I feel hamstrung. What do you find to be inferior?
  - Numerlor 2y ago
    While I also felt limited in vscode compared to pycharm, it definitely feels more polished. I've had some bugs in pycharm for years with no progress on their issue tracker, and new features feel a bit slopilly implemented. Also the built-in type checker is just bad
  - adamc 2y ago
    PyCharm is much more sluggish. And I have had a lot more luck using dev containers in VSCode than PyCharm. In general, I find the process of getting an interpretter set up much nicer in VSCode. Both work for Python syntax highlighting. But I've had several bugs in PyCharm that took several versions to get fixed. To be fair, individual extensions in VSCode can also have bugs, but I've generally found it easier to work around issues because it is less "bundled".
- PeterStuer 2y ago
  I switched from VSCode to Pycharm a few years back. Both are very decent IDE's, but Pycharm feels to me more polished. Pycharm is like driving an automatic, whereas VSCode feels like driving manual. It is a tradeoff as always, so ymmv.
nickserv 2y ago
I use PyCharm community edition for personal/OSS projects. At work I do have the all products pack since we support multiple programming languages for our client libraries and custom integrations. My only major complaint with jetbrains is having a separate IDE for .NET vs everything else.

adamc 2y ago

I was interested, but Mac and subscription kill it for me. Good luck to them, though.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]