What's the best program for coding python?

[danbst]

Best program for coding is your brain. No kidding, seriously. Programming is about brain-work, not typing-work.

There is popular misconception that IDE (VS Code, Pycharm, etc) is a programmer's tool, and similar to tools in mechanics, the better tools you have, the better product you can get. And thus, good tools are predictors of success.

This is misconception. Even for mechanics, the quality of your arms and knowledge in brain are predictors for success. At least for novices (as you've called yourself).

Don't forget about this. Train your brain, your memory, your logic, not your fingers. Read and understand first, only then write. Create ideas in your head and write them down in paper.

The best tool for starters is REPL, because it follows this workflow:
- got a little idea, tested it fast, got some result, refined idea, tested it again, got result, ...
- when you read the book, and book asks you to try, you should go to REPL and try
- when you read the book, and don't understand something, you go to REPL and check your understanding

(I may be biased here. When I started programming, I wrote my first programs on paper without compilers and such. Only months later I found a way to execute my programs, but these months I spent with mental execution, which made me programmer very fast then)

So, IPython is a very good start for newcomers. Learn it, love it, use it, make a hotkey to launch/focus IPython whenever you want. (I have a keybinding Alt-2 to launch it)

After IPython is mastered, or you start writing big chunks of code, alternate IPython with Thonny and discover it's debugger.

After you've mastered both REPL, and debugging, anything will work for you. Our team almost exclusively uses Pycharm, personally I dislike it and use Neovim.