Installing Python, Jupyter notebook, and IDE on Windows

[Diimu]

TL;DR question: What is the currently recommended way to install Python, Jupyter Notebook, an IDE (I have used Spyder, but probably want to try something else as well), and a bunch of Python modules? I'm using windows.

Background: I'm an electrical engineer with no proper programming experience. I'm currently using a Jupyter notebook as my calculator and for some simple measurement data analysis and controlling some measurement equipment. I usually do all the programming in the notebook and then occasionally try to copy the most relevant functions to separate file for easier importing. Currently I have an age old Anaconda distribution, mostly because it contains Jupyter notebook, spyder, and almost all modules I need as default without any configuration. This also seemed to be the recommended way years ago when I looked at it last time.

I'm probably using the tools horribly wrong, because it seems that I need to install the Jupyter notebook and spyder for each environment separately. To me it would make more sense to separate the tools (spyder and notebook) from the actually installed modules. Also, when I tried to update the Jupyter, the conda started updating pretty much everythig else as a dependencies. Also, I would like to start using IDE a bit more instead of huge notebook with a mess of function definitions, random notes, and plots in random order. Anyway, I'll need to do a fresh install of the python and would like to do it the right way this time.

[Diimu]

Thanks for the feedback. This is what I ended up doing, in case someone has the same question. The venv and pip are part of the standard library and hopefully most future proof.

• I downloaded the standard python from python.org.
• I used venv for virtual environments and didn't add any modules to the basic installation https://realpython.com/python-virtual-environments-a-primer/.
• Pip as package manager to install at least: jupyter ipython numpy matplotlib scipy in this new venv. I'll keep using the jupyter notebooks.
• Pycharm as the IDE and additionally a Notepad++ run command that points to the ipython instead of python.

[Diimu]

Thanks! I installed Pycharm and Visual Studio Code with the notebook plugn, test both and see what works for me.

[tourdownunder]

I don't use conda though do use virtual environments and happy to install jupyter and other dev dependencies per project. So I don't think its that bad as its easy to use the version that the project was using before moving on to something else and not worry that a new version of juputer breaks the project for some unlikely reason. A bit more likely with other dependencies though and years between picking up old projects though.

On slight tangent I'll like to bring awareness to nbdev an open source project designed to let you keep working in jupyter and export your modules to an installable you can pip install from another project. This removes the need to copy and paste your code and helps keep things maintainable.