Best Python Coding Tools

If you’re a Python programmer, you know that for the most part, there’s only one way to do everything. That’s a good thing—it means you can write Python code once, and it works the same everywhere, and everyone can understand it.

What we’re trying to say is that there are a lot of tools to help you with your code. And they all basically do the same thing: they offer great functionality in an easy-to-use way.

Best Python Coding Tools

To help you choose your Best Python IDE, we have compiled a list of some of the popular Python IDE. Based on functionality, the number of users, and positive feedback from each user’s experience, here is the list:

1. Pydev

Platform: GNU/Linux/macOS/Windows/Solaris

Official website: https://www.eclipse.org/; http://pydev.org/

Type: IDE

Eclipse is an integrated development environment (IDE) historically designed for the Java language. Still, thanks to a system of plugins or extensions, it can be used with other programming languages, including C/C++ and PHP. Pydev is a plugin that allows Eclipse to be used as a Python IDE that also supports Jython and IronPython. Pydev uses advanced inference techniques to provide elements such as code completion and code analysis. The IDE also provides the following features: debugger, Django, an interactive console, basic syntax highlighting, code coverage, etc. It is one of the best Ide for python and Best Python Editor too.

Pydev is free, platform-independent, and promotes excellent integrity with the Eclipse universe. Thanks to the efforts of the developers and the evolution of technology, python development has become almost comparable to Java development on Eclipse, making the experience much more impressive and exceptional. 

Advantage:

• Easy to learn and also includes several features (CPython, Jython, IronPython)
• The Pydev plugin to code in Python on Eclipse
• Code Completion and Code Analysis

Disadvantage:

• User interfaces not very enriching.

2. Pycharm

Platform: Linux/macOS/Windows

Official website: https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/

Type: IDE

Pycharm is an integrated development environment developed by JetBrains. It stands out from the competition because of its productivity tools, such as quick fixes. Available in three versions, the Apache-licensed Community version, the Educational (Edu) version, and the proprietary Professional version. The first two versions are open source and therefore free of charge, while the Professional version is paid

The Community version is very interesting because it has different features such as syntax highlighting, auto-completion, and live code verification. The paid version has more advanced features such as full database management and a multitude of more important Frameworks than the community version such as Django, Flask, Google App, Engine, Pyramid, and web2py.

Advantage:

• Active community support
• Live code verification and syntax highlighting
• Executes edits and debugs Python code without any external requirements

Disadvantage:

• Slow loading time
• The default setting may require adjustment before existing projects can be used.

3. Sublime Text

Platform: Linux/macOS/Windows

Official website: http://www.sublimetext.com/

Type: Python Text editor

First conceived as an extension for Vim, Sublime Text is a generic text editor coded in C++ and Python. Since version 2.0, this software supports 44 major programming languages, including Python. It was first published in 2007, and Jon Skinner developed it. To create this software, Jon Skinner has adopted three principles:

• Discreet, minimal interface: we must be able to focus on the text and not a myriad of toolbars;
• The text is not hidden by the windows;
• Use as much space as possible: full screen, multi-screen, side-by-side file editing should be possible.

Once you have installed Sublime Text as a Python IDE thanks to the different plugins and packages, you get high quality and powerful IDE that allows you to develop very easily in Python. It incorporates most of the features of a basic Python text editor, including customizable syntax highlighting.

Advantage:

• Fast with very few bugs (big advantage)
• Opens large files
• Supports many languages

Disadvantage:

• Difficult to modify, everything goes through JSON.
• License required
• Learning the shortcuts

4. Visual Studio Code

Platform: Linux/macOS/Windows

Official website: https://code.visualstudio.com

Type: IDE

Developed by Microsoft for Windows Linux and OS, VS Code is an extensible code editor not to be confused with Visual Studio. Indeed VS Code is small but complete, and the software is open source under MIT license; this is what characterizes the difference between Visual Studio and VS Code. The first version of the VS Code was published on April 29, 2015. VS Code is comparable to Atom in terms of functionality. Indeed, just like Atom, VS Code is built on Electron, which means that these two programs have almost the same advantages and disadvantages.

VS Code is Microsoft’s project, with the highest number of contributors on GitHub. This initiative has boosted Microsoft’s notoriety and positioned it as one of the major players in community software. You can add a new language to the environment, such as Python, in this case. Simply download and install the corresponding plugin to adapt it to the environment. Vs. Code is enhanced with features such as the integration of a powerful code auto-completion engine (IntelliSense), a debugging console, and a terminal to launch server commands.

VS Code is very well designed overall, and its main advantage is that it offers an extension-based architecture. Because the IDE is lightweight, it can be extended by adding successive components as needed.

Advantage

• More than 4700 extensions
• A powerful code management engine
• On-demand import of keyboard shortcuts from other Python editors such as Sublime Text or Atom

Disadvantage:

• Difficulty to find the extension that best suits your needs due to the thousands of extensions available

5. Vim

Platform: Linux/macOS/Windows

Official website: https://www.vim.org

Type: Text editor

Vim is a text editor, an editor allowing the manipulation of text files. Its source code was first published in 1991 by Bram Moolenaar, its main developer. Since then, the software has evolved and been improved by its developer and also by the contribution of the developer community. Vim differs from most other python text editors in its modal mode of operation, note that Vim has three basic modes: insert mode, normal or command mode and command line mode.

Vim is free software and is largely customizable by adding extensions or modifying its configuration file, which means that you can very easily adapt it for development in Python. This software includes a multitude of features such as multi-buffers that support simultaneous file editing, automatic indentation adapted to the language, and many others. To download Vim, simply click on this link https://www.vim.org/download.php.

Advantage:

• Software is feature-rich and provides a good user experience with community support.
• Recognition and conversion of file formats (UNIX, MS-DOS or Mac)

Disadvantage:

• Not enough innovative features

6. GNU/Emacs

Platform: Linux/macOS/Windows

Official website: https://www.gnu.org

Type: Text editor

Created in 1976 by Richard Stallman, Emacs (Editing MACroS running on TECO) is a family of text editors with an extensible set of features. This free software is very popular with the developer community.

Richard Stallman insisted on the fact that the software must be completely free and customizable without any restriction in programming. After a few years, many versions of Emacs have appeared, including GNU Emacs, initiated by Richard Stallman in 1984 and XEmacs launched in 1991. GNU Emacs uses a powerful extension language called Emacs Lisp that supports advanced tasks such as writing, compiling programs, surfing the Internet, reading email, and discussion forums.

This software is available for free download and is available on all platforms. GNU Emacs uses various customization scripts for development in several languages, including Python.

For Python development, you can use the Elpy extension on Emacs to work with Python projects. This software is very feature-rich. Among its many features, we can mention the highlighting of syntax to differentiate document elements such as keywords and comments; Automatic indentation to have consistent formatting in a file, etc.

Advantage :

• Free and fully customizable software.
• Automatic insertion of elements required by the document structure, such as spaces, newlines, and brackets;
• 24-bit color encoded support for the terminals supporting it

Disadvantage:

• Not easy to use for beginners in programming

7. Atom/Atom-IDE

Platform: Linux/macOS/Windows

Official website: https://atom.io/

Type: IDE

Atom includes most of the functionalities of a basic IDE. Among its features are syntax highlighting and auto-completion. Atom’s developers are working on the integration of major programming languages such as Rust or Go. Atom is making progress in improving its performance, and developers are extremely attentive to the needs and opinions of the community, striving to make the user experience more rewarding. There are improvements in the waiting time for opening the software and small improvements in the time required for important calculations to reduce latency. Still, more and more progress is to be expected in the coming months. Atom is one of the best text editor for python.

One of the reasons that have contributed to the Atom’s success is its fully customizable interface. Everything can be changed, from the interface to the basic functions. On the other hand, this rather advantageous initiative is also one of the problems at the root of the program’s latency. But overall, Atom remains a very practical and functional IDE, and we look forward to program updates.

Advantage:

• Fully customizable interface
• Well documented
• Offers almost everything VS Code has to offer

Disadvantage:

• Excessive RAM consumption
• Further improvements are needed in system latency and optimization.
• Not really suitable for handling large code files

8. IDLE

Platform: Linux/macOS/Windows

Official website: https://docs.python.org/3/library/idle.html

Type: IDE

Integrated Development and Learning Environment is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) released in December 1998 by Guido Van Rossum for Python development. It is a simple IDE and thus is suitable for beginners. It consists of a multi-window text editor with syntax highlighting and integrated debugger with stepping, persistent breakpoints, and call stack visibility.

Advantage:

• It can be used to execute a single statement.
• It can be used to create, modify, and execute Python scripts. 
• It offers features like syntax highlighting, auto-completion & smart indent.
• It has a debugger with stepping & breakpoint features.

Disadvantage:

• IDLE is not available by default in python distribution for Linux.
• It needs a respective package manager for installation.

9. Spyder

Platform: Linux/macOS/Windows

Official website: https://github.com/spyder-ide/spyder

Type: IDE

Named Pydee in its first versions, Spyder was created by Pierre Raybaut in 2008. It is cross-platform and under non-copyleft license (Non-copyleft free software is released by its author with permission to redistribute and modify it). Since 2012, it is the Python scientific community that has been maintaining Spyder thanks to their contribution.

Spyder has basic features such as syntax highlighting and auto-completion and also integrates many scientific use libraries such as Matplotlib, Numpy, IPython, Scipy. It is open-source and free of charge, and also installation is very easy thanks to the Python package manager.

It offers a unique combination of advanced analysis, debugging, editing, interactive execution, in-depth inspection, and visualization capabilities of a scientific software package. These main components are the interactive console, the documentation viewer, the variable explorer, and development tools.

Advantage:

• Community support
• Rich in development tool features
• Complete documentation

Disadvantage:

• Execution dependencies
• Optional dependencies

10. Thonny

Platform: Linux/macOS/Windows

Official website: https://thonny.org

Type: IDE

Thonny is an integrated development environment (IDE). Developed by the University of Tartu in Estonia, this software has been designed mainly to make life easier for beginners in Python by providing them with a simple, lightweight IDE. Still, with excellent features, it is a bit like the beginner’s kit. This software is therefore particularly suitable for beginners who wish to start programming and development in Python and is therefore not at all suitable for development experts.

The user interface is isolated from all features that may distract beginners. It is a well-thought-out pedagogical course for beginners who want to develop in Python quickly, easily, and simply.

Advantage:

• IDE adapted for beginners’ learning
• Basic and functional user interface
• Does not require a large amount of memory to run

Disadvantage:

• If you are an experienced developer, this software is certainly not for you.
• Only basic functionalities

How to choose the best Python IDE in 2022?

For beginners, there are a lot of IDEs with basic features allowing you to discover this environment and become familiar with each feature before moving on to the next level. For experienced developers, the choice of your IDE should be based on the performance and advanced features of IDEs for large projects.

best python ide for beginners

There are several IDEs for Python because it is a very versatile and widely-used programming language. There are paid and open-source IDEs, some that are strictly for Python, and those that work with multiple languages. Below are a few of the most popular Python IDEs.

PyDev

PyDev is an open-source, third-party plug-in for Eclipse IDE. It is very flexible, which makes it a go-to choice for programmers. Some of its best features are the remote debugger for remote development, code coverage, code folding, an editor with syntax highlighting, and Python 2.x and 3.x syntax. The remote debugger allows files that are not launched in Eclipse to be debugged.

What Makes PyDev a Good Choice for Python Beginners?

• Easy to start
• Free to use
• Includes intelligent code completion and analysis capabilities

PyCharm

PyCharm is a cross-platform IDE specific to Python. It is the most widely used Python IDE. You should download PyCharm if you want easy development of larger projects. Some of its best features include its integration with JavaScript, CSS, and TypeScript, smart code navigation, quick and safe code refactoring, code inspection, and access to databases directly from the IDE.

What Makes PyCharm a Good Choice for Python Beginners?

• Free to use
• Code intelligence including code snippets
• Customizable interface and cross-technology development IDE

Visual Studio Code

Popularly known as VS Code, this is an open-source IDE developed by Microsoft. It is an extensible popular code editor that is lightweight and comes with great features including Git integration, code debugging, code linting, an auto code completion feature, themes, and a terminal to launch server commands.

What Makes Visual Studio Code a Good Choice for Python Beginners?

• Over 4,700 extensions
• Intuitive keyboard shortcuts
• Easily customizable

IDLE

IDLE stands for Integrated Development and Learning Environment. It is an IDE written in Python and comes as a default editor with Python.  IDLE dialog menus are the best for beginners and this IDE can be used on macOS, Windows, and Linux thanks to its cross-platform functionality. Some of the best IDLE features include a multi-window text editor, program animation, syntax highlighting, auto-completion, and smart indentation.

What Makes IDLE a Good Choice for Python Beginners?

• It is free
• Offers built-in help
• Easy debugging and editing features

Spyder

Spyder is an open-source, cross-platform IDE developed specifically for data scientists and data analysts. It comes with Anaconda distribution and has advanced features like syntax highlighting, advanced editing, interactive execution, auto-completion, splitting, data manipulation, and integration with other libraries like SciPy, NumPy, Pandas, and Matplotlib.

What Makes Spyder a Good Choice for Python Beginners?

• Supports editing, code analysis, profiling functionality, and data exploration
• Many comprehensive development tool features
• Complete documentation

Conclusion

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