Microsoft Visual Studio Code vs. Python IDLE

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft offers Visual Studio Code, an open source text editor that supports code editing, debugging, IntelliSense syntax highlighting, and other features.
$0
Python IDLE
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Python's IDLE is the integrated development environment (IDE) and learning platform for Python, presented as a basic and simple IDE appropriate for learners in educational settings.
$0
Pricing
Microsoft Visual Studio CodePython IDLE
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft Visual Studio CodePython IDLE
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Microsoft Visual Studio CodePython IDLE
Best Alternatives
Microsoft Visual Studio CodePython IDLE
Small Businesses
BBEdit
BBEdit
Score 9.9 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Vim
Vim
Score 9.4 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Vim
Vim
Score 9.4 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Microsoft Visual Studio CodePython IDLE
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(91 ratings)
2.5
(7 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.4
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(8 ratings)
8.2
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
9.7
(23 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Microsoft Visual Studio CodePython IDLE
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
As a general workhorse IDE, Microsoft Visual Studio Codee is unmatched. Building on the early success of applications such as Atom, it has long been the standard for electron based IDEs. It can be outshone using IDEs that are dedicated to particular platforms, such as Microsoft Visual Studio Code for .net and the Jetbrains IDEs for Java, Python and others. For remote collaborative development, something like Zed is ahead of VSCode live share, which can be quite flakey.
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Python Software Foundation
Scenarios where python IDLE is well suited 1-Quick scripting and prototyping 2-Education and training 3-small projects utilities 4-exploring python libraries and modules Scenarios where python is less appropriate 1 large scale projects 2 complex debugging and profiling 3 multi language development 4 Advanced code analysis and inspection
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Pros
Microsoft
  • Integrate with the git repository very well.
  • Integrated copilot chat is very helpful to write code snippets and helps beginners to start with coding and development.
  • Great library of available extensions is one of the best features in Microsoft Visual Studio Code.
  • Dedicated Testing option to configure pytest and others are quite handy to use.
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Python Software Foundation
  • Firstly, I would say Python IDLE interface is user friendly.
  • Easy to learn for the beginners.
  • Syntax highlighting is nice features.
  • Smart indent helps a lot.
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Cons
Microsoft
  • The customization of key combinations should be more accessible and easier to change
  • The auxiliary panels could be minimized or as floating tabs which are displayed when you click on them
  • A monitoring panel of resources used by Microsoft Visual Studio Code or plugins and extensions would help a lot to be able to detect any malfunction of these
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Python Software Foundation
  • Too simplistic
  • Could not find source revision management integration support
  • Only basic debugging is available
  • Does not have data-science-specific notebooks (but can be installed separately)
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Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
Solid tool that provides everything you need to develop most types of applications. The only reason not a 10 is that if you are doing large distributed teams on Enterprise level, Professional does provide more tools to support that and would be worth the cost.
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Python Software Foundation
No answers on this topic
Usability
Microsoft
Microsoft Visual Studio Code earns a 10 for its exceptional balance of power and simplicity. Its intuitive interface, robust extension ecosystem, and integrated terminal streamline development. With seamless Git integration and highly customizable settings, it adapts perfectly to any workflow, making complex coding tasks feel effortless for beginners and experts alike.
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Python Software Foundation
The IDE Python IDLE is a good place to start as it helps you become familiar with the way Python works and understand its syntax.
This IDE allows you to configure the environment, font, size, colors, .....
It also looks like any simple text editor for any operating system, I work with Windows or Linux interchangeably, and you don't have to learn to use the IDE before programming.
Once the IDE is executed you can start programming directly in it.
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Reliability and Availability
Microsoft
Overall, Microsoft Visual Studio Code is pretty reliable. Every so often, though, the app will experience an unexplained crash. Since it is a stand-alone app, connectivity or service issues don't occur in my experience. Restarting the app seems to always get around the problem, but I do make sure to save and backup current work.
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Python Software Foundation
No answers on this topic
Performance
Microsoft
Microsoft Visual Studio Code is pretty snappy in performance terms. It launches quickly, and tasks are performed quickly. I don't have a lot of integrations other than CoPilot, but I suspect that if the integration partner is provisioned appropriately that any performance impact would be pretty minimal. It doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles (unless you start adding plugins left and right).
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Python Software Foundation
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Microsoft
Active development means filing a bug on the GitHub repo typically gets you a response within 4 days. There are plugins for almost everything you need, whether it be linting, Vim emulation, even language servers (which I use to code in Scala). There is well-maintained official documentation. The only thing missing is forums. The closest thing is GitHub issues, which typically has the answers but is hard to sift through -- there are currently 78k issues.
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Python Software Foundation
Python IDLE support is what the community can give you. As it is free software, it does not have support provided by the manufacturer or by third-parties.
In any case, for most of the problems that normal users can find, the solution, or alternatives, can be found quickly online.
As this IDE is made in Python, the support is the same group of Python developers.
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Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
Visual Studio Code stacks up nicely against Visual Studio because of the price and because it can be installed without admin rights. We don't exclusively use Visual Studio Code, but rather use Visual Studio and Visual Studio code depending on the project and which version of source control the given project is wired up to.
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Python Software Foundation
It's easy to set up and run quick analysis in Python IDLE on my local machine. The output is direct and easy to read. But sometimes I prefer Jupyter Notebook when the datasets are large, since it would take too long to run on my local machine. It is easier to run Jupyter Notebook on my cloud desktop
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Scalability
Microsoft
It is easily deployed with our Jamf Pro instance. There is actually very little setup involved in getting the app deployed, and it is fairly well self-contained and does not deploy a large amount of associated files. However, it is not particularly conducive to large project, multi-developer/department projects that involve some form of central integration.
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Python Software Foundation
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Saves money by replacing suites of tools such as Visual Studio, IntelliJ, etc.
  • Speeds development time and developer environment setup time
  • Strengthens code quality with integrated autoformatting and linting
  • Strengths Git practices by keeping version control tightly connected with the code
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Python Software Foundation
  • In a short time, we were able to develop several ML models for various teams to make accurate decisions.
  • Beginners can easily understand and adapt to GUI.
  • We could automate several manual validation tasks and so could reduce human intervention.
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