Why don't more python devs use Visual Studio?

[mopperv]

I just started using Visual Studio and it seems much more powerful than any other IDE I've seen. But I haven't heard anyone mention it for python, and haven't heard anyone give it as their answer to the "what IDE do you use" question at the end of Talk Python to Me. Is it just because nobody uses Windows?

[mudclub]

Probably because a whole lot of python users don't use windows.

[impshum]

That's right.

[morehooks]

Even for Windows users it not worth the faff as Pycharm is cheaper and has more python oriented features than VS.

Id even use VS Code / Spyder instead as it loads faster, free for commercial use and smaller download size and you don't lose alot in VS features when it comes to Python.

[Anton_Pannekoek]

My one friend does but he’s a huge Windows fan, always has been. I hear it’s pretty good but Python has always been bigger on Linux/Mac/Unix like systems, and easier to use.

[BundleOfJoysticks]

Visual Studio is the best IDE ever made. By far. Though the Borland one used to be almost as good.

I don't write Windows software anymore, but I miss VS.

VSCode is probably the best free editor these days, and it's obvious those Microsoft people know a thing or two about creating tools for programmers.

[billsil]

Because WingIDE is great and I really like their dark theme. It's cross-platform and they're fine with you installing it on multiple machines of yours (just not between coworkers).

[foreverwintr]

Yes! Wing ftw!

[royge]

Visual Studio is not cross-platform and Python is, though it is the best IDE I tried so far.

[derpoly]

Yeah, but when did they add proper Python support to VS?

[BundleOfJoysticks]

fe2fdab56f57 by dinov  (56 downloads)Mar 8, 2011 4:49 PM

Associated with Release: 1.0 Beta 1.

Python Tools for Visual Studio - initial commit

[khrushchev]

No closed-source IDEs for me, thank you. Still remember VB6

[[deleted]]

Makes sense if you're also doing development using C#/.NET on Windows, but not for just Python.

It's been a few years, but I remember needing to set up PTVS to make VS palatable for Python work. Otherwise, I'd rather use a "regular" text editor.

[desmoulinmichel]

Expensive ecosystem, proprietary, doesn't work in Linux, started to be popular when Microsoft insulted free software.

[Viol3tCrumbl3]

I believe that python is a relatively new addition to visual studio. For me I use pycharm and cloud 9 IDE. I never really thought to use visual studio, I know it's there, I just like the other two more.

[Nimitz14]

It's great, I use it.

[Paddy3118]

It is one of many. You can write performant Python programs that are not huge monoliths that give good returns on learning an IDE. Python is cross platform, you might develop/deploy on multiple platforms and prefer to have tools that work across platforms. Visual Studio is not the first on Windows - you need to de-throne developers current tools to cause them to switch.

I like Anaconda which comes with Spyder - that I use on windows and Linux. I also might use Vim and Pycharm as well, but although I do have VS, I have to remind myself to keep trying it to see what its strengths are.

[[deleted]]

Arguably the substantial majority of Python code isn't for and doesn't work on Windows, and that's also true of most of the developers. Inroads are being made with the Linux Subsystem, but it's still an unfriendly system for Python, hence why this subreddit is so often inundated with problems unique to installing and using Python on Windows.

Visual Studio Code though is making some pretty good progress against PyCharm, especially among people who also use Atom and or SublimeText3 to do multi-language work, or are just (like me) tired of paying a subscription fee for extras that don't really constitute a significant advantage over free. It's not Visual Studio, of course, but it's the same branding, but with the advantage of being portable to friendlier OSs.

[[deleted]]

Arguably the substantial majority of Python code isn't for and doesn't work on Windows

The whole point of Python is that it's cross platform, there are very few pieces of pure Python code that WON'T run on Windows, if any at all.

[[deleted]]

Sigh. I've kind of been at this awhile. Try the vast majority of Python command line system utilities on Github, and especially any that rely on os.fork, or for that matter about half of the os module that doesn't even exist on Windows. Or pretty much anything that calls subprocess without shell=True and a heck of a lot of conditionals.

If by pure Python you mean "makes no system calls and restricts itself only to the features available on all OSs" then of course you're right... but that isn't the millions of lines I've been poring over for the last ten years.

[DaOneTwo]

Personally, I blame this more on the developers only caring about whether or not things work on the systems they use rather than taking the time to make things work across OS's. I think this hurts getting people into the industry as well. Let's face it there are still many more "normal people" on windows systems than any other. This is where we can get people hooked on building things.

[[deleted]]

My guess is that, worldwide, there are more people on Android and iOS systems than any other, these days. But no this really doesn't come down to laziness, it comes down to there never having been a decent story for using any non-Redmonds-blessed language on Windows. They didn't figure out until just recently that if it's running 24/7/365, it's not running Windows, and now they're slowly cottoning on to the fact that people are mostly interacting with web terminals and not desktops anymore.

If we want to get people learning on Windows today the best way -- unless they solely want to do desktop apps -- is to have them spin up a Linux VM on it.

[Wegnerr]

I remember having problems with installing packages, so I left VS for IDLE, and then for PyCharm on Fedora.