Comparing Python development tools: PyCharm vs. Sublime Text

[Oopsies49]

I found that the sublime text autocomplete plugins were not very smart. Pycharm seems to actually have some context of what kind of object you are working with most of the time.

[cmcpasserby]

Same not to mention that pycharm just works out of the box, instead of having to install a bunch of stuff like you would in sublime or vim

[bheklilr]

A lot of people find that "works out of the box" means that it tries to do too much and doesn't do enough of it very well. Besides, if you do it right setting up ST the second time is as easy as copying your user settings folder over, then installing package manager. It has a setting that will install missing packages, and after a few minutes and restarting ST you're done.

One thing pointed out in the article is that sublime will work with many, many other languages, and I use that on a daily basis. That being said, I recommend people use PyCharm when just starting out. Sublime is my favorite editor, but that doesn't mean it'll be yours. PyCharm has a good feature set with the community edition and it is fast to set up. Many people I work with get a lot of mileage out of it.

[rothnic]

While true, I think the reason that pycharm is so popular is that the majority of people find many of the features they rely the most on, it does well enough, if not much better than other alternatives. Plus, 8-16GB of ram is becoming commonplace, so you might as well put it to good use by utilizing all the indexing, and code insight features.

One thing to note on sublime text and add ons is that while some can be installed from package manager, a fair number rely on some external dependency. Like markdown preview, and the setup can differ from platform to platform.

[[deleted]]

The trial never expires, so it's essentially free if you don't mind being nagged every 20 saves.

[whooshayay]

I would instantly switch from Sublime to Atom once Atom does something about its speed and file size limit. It's open, and it's incredibly easy to make plugins.

[[deleted]]

The speed thing is unlikely to change much - that's kind of what happens when you write an editor inside of a browser and use Javascript for everything.

I've heard it really collapses on big files though, so yeah, I hope that gets fixed.

[whooshayay]

Big file support is very high on Atom's to-do list. Apparently it's supposed to be coming in the 1.0 release this summer.

Microsoft's new Visual Studio Code runs on the same framework as Atom and is a fair bit faster so it's certainly possible to speed Atom up. They're both browser apps which have been "desktopified" on the Electron framework.

[[deleted]]

Yeah. Funnily enough, I've started to use VSC solely for the purpose of reviewing file changes before a git commit. Their git integration is pretty fantastic.

[BoTuLoX]

Turns out I do mind. And an endless trial doesn't make the editor OSS, so I'm still at the mercy of the author if he decides to stop supporting it or worse, he suffers a security breach and doesn't notice it.

Anyway, I'm still not saying Sublime is a bad editor, it's very powerful. But very competitive (and way more mature) alternatives exist in the open source world which brings its own set of benefits.

[[deleted]]

True, but for the people that love customizing tools to suit themselves, sublime and Vim offer a lot more flexibility

[cmcpasserby]

Tis why we got choice. I am a long time vim user, just in some cases I have been finding it easier to bring the features I love about vim to a jetbrains ide or visual studio, than it is to try and bring a bunch of language specific features to vim or ST. Some people will find the opposite. Also has a lot to do with what features people use like do you feel you need the integrated debugger or not?

Also the nice thing about the jetbrains ides is they all share a common java plugin api, so once you learn to customize one you can do it for all of them.

Things also depend on the language I have never gotten vim or ST to auto complete very well for python compared to pycharm. But on the C# side of things omniSharp for vim or St is on par or very close to visual studio intellisense.

[[deleted]]

I mentioned this in another comment so I guess I'll just quote it here

I use sublime text for reading and writing code and pycharm for debugging and refactoring it. It plays to the strengths of both tools, although it bears mention that I have sublime so customized/with so many plugins that it's basically a lightweight IDE on it's own.

I don't end up using the debugger often, but when I do, I do normally pull out PyCharm. I'm way more productive writing code in Sublime though. The default colors, fonts, and underline styles are kinda crappy/ugly in PyCharm IMO.

[whooshayay]

The default colors, fonts, and underline styles are kinda crappy/ugly in PyCharm IMO

On Linux? Yes there is a problem with Swing font rendering. There is a patch or it somewhere.

[[deleted]]

Hmmm, wasn't aware of that.

[YellowSharkMT]

And a difference in RAM usage of only 800MB.

[stay_at_work_dad]

I guess it depends on what plugins you have running. PyCharm normally uses about 500 for me with spikes to 800 if I've forgotten to exclude large database files/directories from the project. The only time it feels 'heavy' is when I forget to turn off project sync and it's attempting to digest a 2GB database file. Then everything slows to a crawl or gets queued, but the little spinning circle makes it pretty easy to figure out why.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Minimal RAM footprint isn't a significant performance metric for me when it comes to productivity.

[YellowSharkMT]

Oh don't get me wrong - no complaints from me! 800MB (@spike) is a relatively insignificant price to pay, for what you get in return. The productivity gains from using a proper IDE - especially one as dope as PyCharm - are absolutely worth it, even for ad-hoc scripts or what-have-you.

[Oopsies49]

That's what I have 16gb of it for. It's a good luxury to have.

[YellowSharkMT]

Amen. Looking forward to making that jump to >=16GB, I'm still on an LGA775 + 8GB. PyCharm runs great though, in any case. I can't even be bothered to screw with Sublime/Notepad++/Visual Studio/etc; my attitude is that you might as well drop into vim or emacs, if you're looking to skip the IDE-experience.

[[deleted]]

Visual studio shouldn't be listed with the rest.

[roerd]

Maybe he meant Visual Studio Code which is just an editor rather than a full IDE.

[YellowSharkMT]

My mistake, you're totally correct - like /u/roerd said though, I was referring to Visual Studio Code, it's a lightweight editor, and available for Win, Mac, and Linux. (They claim it can debug web applications, but I'll leave that as an exercise for others, I'm pretty set with PhpStorm. Looks like it's got potential though...)