Which python ide

#python #beginners

If you are new to Python programming, you may wonder where to start and how to run Python code. In general there are two ways:

in the terminal
in an IDE

For small projects, you could use the terminal. But for large projects, an IDE saves you a lot of time opening closing files, and programming.

You can do your programming work in a Python IDE. This is a development environment that tries to make programming easier. While you can run Python in a console, I recommend to use an IDE for larger projects.

Often times it has many features, you can run your program with a single key press, open multiple files and tabs at once, have searching through all files and many other features available, but this depends on the IDE.

Some popular IDEs

Some popular IDEs these days are PyCharm and Microsoft Visual Studio Code. These are popular because of their many available features and free of price.

A screenshot of Visual Studio Code. Besides Python it supports many other programming languages. This is not the case for all IDEs.

You could try Spyder IDE or Wingware IDE, which are not as popular as the ones above but are good IDEs.

If you want to code on your mobile or tablet (perhaps because of long commute), you can use Pythonista IDE or QPython

But there are many more, some use older editors like Emacs or VIM as IDE. It depends on your personal preferences or sometimes on your employers preferences.

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