What is PyCharm? Why PyCharm is a Good Option to Run Python?
PyCharm is a powerful Integrated Development Environment (IDE) specifically designed for Python programming language. It is developed by JetBrains and provides a complete set of tools for productive Python development.
Some key features of PyCharm are:
- Intelligent code editor with syntax highlighting
- Auto code completion and inspection
- Integrated debugger and testing tools
- Robust navigation and refactoring
- Customizable interface and themes
- Integration with major VCS/SVN tools
- Interactive Python console
- Support for web frameworks like Django, Flask, etc.
PyCharm comes in two editions – Professional and Community. The Community edition is open source with basic features, while the Professional edition requires a paid license but comes bundled with advanced tools for enterprise development.
Integrated Development Environments for Python
IDE carries several advantages, from creating a script to running an application using the Python compiler alone. In short, An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An ideal IDE should be shipped with a source code editor, build automation tools, and a debugger. Some of the key features of an ideal IDE application are:
- Code completion – suggests names of variables, methods, etc, as you type
- Syntax highlighting – color-codes keywords, strings, comments, etc
- Error detection – highlights syntactical errors for quick fixing
- Debugger integration – debug code by stepping through lines
- Version control system – integrate tools like Git, SVN, etc
- Plugin ecosystem – extend functionality with plugins
Altogether, all these features take the developers and application users to the next level. It increases the programmer’s productivity by reducing configuration steps and providing an integrated toolkit within a single application.
Popular Python IDEs
Well, PyCharm is not the only IDE application to run Python, if you are interested in trying other IDE applications to run your Python script or project, here are the alternative IDE applications to go with:
- PyCharm – Cross-platform Python IDE with robust features
- Visual Studio Code – Lightweight code editor with Python support
- Spyder – Open source Python IDE ideal for data science
- Jupyter Notebook – Browser-based notebook environment for Python
- Thonny – Beginner-friendly Python IDE for learning
- Eclipse + PyDev – Extensible IDE with Python plugin
- Wing IDE – Customizable Python IDE for faster coding
All these IDEs offer features like smart code completion, interactive debugging, real-time error highlighting, refactoring support, version control integration, customizable work environment, and many more. The prime goal of all these IDEs to improve developer productivity and efficiency when writing Python code. That doesn’t mean that these IDEs are comparable with only Python. They are capable of working on other high-level programming languages too.
Why PyCharm is a Good Option for Python?
A short answer to this question is, PyCharm is exclusively made for Python. To support that, here are some of the reasons that make PyCharm one of the best IDEs for Python:
- It provides smart code assistance, completion, and analysis, helping write Python code faster
- The integrated debugger allows efficient debugging of Python code through breakpoints, frames, and variable monitoring
- It has extensive support and tooling for major Python web frameworks like Django and Flask
- The professional edition offers advanced profiling, database tools, remote development capabilities, etc.
- PyCharm offers integration with unit testing frameworks like pytest, nose, etc., for test-driven development
- It provides tools for collaboration through VCS, remote interpreter, and Docker
- The IDE is customizable with themes, key bindings, plugins, and configurable UI
- PyCharm has robust navigation, search, and refactoring capabilities
In summary, PyCharm simplifies and accelerates the Python development workflow. The rich set of capabilities it offers for coding, testing, debugging, collaboration, and delivery makes it an ideal choice for Python developers.
Prerequisites to Install PyCharm on Windows
Before you go ahead and install PyCharm on Windows, it’s good to roll your eyes over the prerequisites. Well, it’s not something mandatory, as PyCharm doesn’t demand any special resources. Most of the computers are capable of running PyCharm. For the purpose of the documentation, we would like to add this section. Make sure your machine should have these resources.
- A computer running Windows 7 or later versions. PyCharm supports Windows 7, 8, 8.1, and 10.
- At least 2 GB RAM for smooth performance. More RAM is recommended for large projects.
- 2.5 GB free storage space for installation files and caches.
- Python 3.5 or later installed. Python 3 comes pre-installed with the latest Windows versions. For older versions, install Python from python.org.
- PyCharm supports Python 2 version 2.7.9 and later as well. So you can have multiple Python versions.
- Download the PyCharm installer for Windows
3. Reboot & Launch PyCharm
We recommend rebooting the machine to save the PATH variable settings.
Follow the steps below to launch PyCharm after installing it:
1. Open the Start Menu and click on the PyCharm icon under JetBrains to launch it. Alternatively, double-click the desktop shortcut if you have created one.
2. When launching for the first time, a welcome screen will appear, which will guide you through some configuration settings.
3. Click Next and choose your UI theme. You can choose from Dracula (dark) or IntelliJ (light).
4. Next, choose whether you want to customize the IDE, install plugins, etc. Select Skip Remaining and Set Defaults to quickly jump to the IDE window.
5. PyCharm will index the files on the first launch, which helps with faster code assistance later. You will see a progress bar indicating the indexing status.
6. After indexing is complete, you will see the PyCharm IDE window with a tip of the day.
Your PyCharm is now ready to use!
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