Python is one of the main high-level programming languages generally used to automate certain repetitive tasks. Python services are largely used for maths, scripting, server-side web development, development of software, and artificial intelligence. It works on multiple platforms like macOS, Linux, Windows, Raspberry Pi, etc.
Before exploring more about Python IDE, we must understand what is the difference between Code editor and IDE!
A code editor is a tool that is a platform for editing and modifying the code only. They are generally lightweight and can be great for learning. However, once your program gets bigger, you need to code, debug and test your software, that’s where IDEs come in.
IDE stands for Integrated Development Environment.
IDE is basically a software pack that consists of equipment that provides many features like coding, compiling, debugging, executing, autocomplete, libraries. An IDE can understand your code better than any text editor and consists of characteristics such as code linting, build automation, testing and debugging.
Pycharm is an integrated development environment which is one of the widely used Python IDE developed by JetBrains. Pycharm is known for its product development thanks to its productivity tools such as quick fixes. It is available with mainly two versions as pycharm professional edition and pycharm community edition.
Price: US $ 199 per User – 1st year for Pycharm Professional Developer, Community(Free)
Website: https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/
Compatibility/Platform Support: Windows, Linux, Mac OS.
Download link: Pycharm ubuntu , Pycharm Windows, Pycharm Mac
Spyder is among the best python-compatible IDEs for Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Big Data. It provides an exceptional combination of data science workflows such as advanced analysis, editing, debugging and profiling functionality.
Python integrates well with popular data science libraries such as Numpy, SciPy, and Matplotlib. Spyder can also be used as a PyQt5 extension library, allowing programmers to develop upon its functionality and embedded its components.
Price: Free (open source)
Website: https://www.spyder-ide.org/
Compatibility/Platform Support: Windows, Linux, Mac OS.
Download Link: Spyder with Anaconda
PyDev is a third party python editor for Eclipse IDE which may be used in Python, Jython and IronPython development. Pydev enables advanced inference techniques to provide elements such as code analysis, code completion, and code completion with auto import. PyDev comes with many important features such as: type hinting, refactoring of python code, Debugger in the graphical pattern, basic syntax highlighting, analysis of code.
Price: Free (Open Source)
Website: https://www.pydev.org/index.html
Compatibility/Platform Support: Linux/macOS/Windows/Solaris/QT
Download link: pydev eclipse python download
Wing IDE Python 3 provides more productive development experience which developers require for python development. Features like smart editors which autocomplete the code and strong debugger improve python development speed and accuracy using Wing Python IDE.
Price: US $ 95 to US $ 179 per user for commercial use, wing Personal (Free), Wing 101 (Free)
Website: https://wingware.com/
Compatibility/Platform Support : Windows, Linux, Mac OS.
Download link : Wing IDE 101, wingware wing ide professional, Wing personal
Atom editor for python is a hackable text editor for the 21 century, similar to the Sublime text code editor developed by Github that can be used for Python development. Atom IDE is the most preferable code editor used by developers due to its simple interface. Atom is developed using Electron, a framework for developing desktop applications using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Price: Free (Open source)
Website: https://atom.io/
Compatibility/Platform Support : Windows, Linux, Mac OS
Download link : atom editor for python download
IDLE is a popular editor which is python’s default integrated and learning environment, useful for beginners to get started easily with Python.It is also a cross platform tool can be used on Windows, Unix, MacOS, and optional for many Linux distributions.
Price: Free (Open Source)
Website: https://docs.python.org/3/library/idle.html
Compatibility/Platform Support : Windows, Linux, Mac OS
Download link : Python idle download
Thonny is a simple, lightweight IDE for learning and teaching programming for beginners that comes with Python 3 built- in, designed with the beginner Pythonista scripting environment. It is developed at The University of Tartu, which you can download for free on the Bitbucket repository for Linux, Windows, and Mac.
New thonny version used in raspberry pi also helpful for micropython development.
Price : Free
Website: https://thonny.org
Compatibility/Platform Support : Windows, Linux, Mac OS
Download link : Thony version 3.2.6 Download
Description: VSCode using a lightweight Python IDE is a productive alternative to PyCharm. To run the VS Code in Python, developers need to set up a Python development environment which includes VS Code Python extension, Python interpreter, and Python 3.
Now Microsoft office ally announces native support of Jupyter Notebook in VS Code. Sometime people also know VS code as vscode jupyter, pylint vscode and vscode django.
Price : Free
Website : https://code.visualstudio.com/
Compatibility/Platform Support : Windows, Linux, Mac OS
Download link : Visual Studio Code for Python Download
Jupyter is an intelligent tool for beginners who have just started with data science, scientific computing and data machine learning. If you regularly do data science work with Python, you might fall in love with the Ipython/jupyter tool. Jupyter Notebook is an open source software that allows you to share visualisations, live code, etc.
While Jupeter supports many programming languages, If anyone wants to install Jupyter Notebook than Python (Python 3.3 or greater, or Python 2.7) is the core requirement. We highly suggest Anaconda distribution to install Python and Jupyter.
Price : Free
Website : https://jupyter.org/
Compatibility/Platform Support : Windows, Linux, Mac OS(Please review)
Download link : JupyterLab installation
PyScripter is a feature rich, light weight and open source IDE created to become competitive in functionality with other commercial windows based IDEs. Its extensive blend of features make it a productive Python development environment. It comes in two flavours as PyScripter 32 bit and PyScripter 64 bit is compatible with Python 2.6 and Python 3.0.
Price : Free(Opensource)
Website: https://github.com/pyscripter/pyscripter/wiki
Compatibility/Platform Support : Windows, Linux, Mac OS
Download link : PyScripter python installation
Ninja IDE is a lightweight, cross-platform integrated development environment that runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Initially it was created for Python and allows developers to create applications for several purposes using extensive tools and utilities. It also supports code highlighting features for many other programming languages.
I’ve been running Ninja-IDE 2.0 on my Raspberry Pi and it runs surprisingly well.
Price : Free
Website : http://ninja-ide.org/
Compatibility/Platform Support : Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, FreeBSD
Download link : Ninja-IDE Python installation
Vim is a highly configurable, open source text editor which allows manipulation of text files. Vim is known for its unique modal mode of operation including basic three modes as: insert mode, command mode, and command line mode.
The IdeaVim plugin emulates Vim in PyCharm, including normal, insert, and visual modes, Command-line and Ex modes, Vim regexp and configuration, and other features.
Price : Free
Website: https://www.vim.org/
Compatibility/Platform Support :Windows, Linux, Mac OS, IOS, Android, UNIX, AmigaOS, and MorphOS.
Download link : Vim Python installation
The topmost Python IDEs and text editors preferred by the developers worldwide are covered in this article. We hope this article would have given you a clear picture of the difference between IDEs and text editor’s features.
Large scale Industries prefer IDEs like Atom, Pycharm, Sublime text, wing, etc, so they can get the latest features with extended support for their issues. Small scale Industries search for open source and cover most of the features, they mostly prefer PyDev, Spyder, IDEL, Eric, and Python for Visual Studio code for their projects.
Choosing the best IDE is a difficult task for beginners, one can compare top Python IDEs by looking at their cost, OS supported, Size, Languages supported, and iPython support.
An IDE has features like Integrated build process, code autocompletion, file management, version control, etc. With a text editor you should write/modify text/code only.
PyCharm is one of the widely used, full-featured Python IDE which supports several languages.
Jupyter notebook is an open-sourced web-based application, which allows you to create and share documents containing equations, live code, visualizations, and narrative text.
Spyder is a light-weight IDE and uses fewer system resources, that means it is really faster than Pycharm. Pycharm, on the other hand, is much more powerful for software development.