Item: PyCharm
Rating: 7
Author: Maike Holthuijzen

Overall Satisfaction with PyCharm

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Overall, members of my organization use IDEs relatively infrequently, but there are a few employees who do use PyCharm. Those of us who have the program use it for developing code and doing reproducible research (PyCharm has options to set up version control with Github or any other similar version control software). PyCharm has loads of options--it is not at all limited to writing Python code, which makes it very versatile. I like it because it helps conduct reproducible research, which is a crucial part of the research my organization conducts.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Pycharm supports different languages, which is very convenient. It also has an option for creating Jupyter notebooks.
Pycharm is similar to JetBrain's other products (such as CLion), which makes it easy to learn once you are used to IDEs made by JetBrains.
It works great with Python distributions like Anaconda. It is super simple to set up if you have Anaconda installed.

Cons

Pycharm is expensive if you cannot get a license through work (although you can get a lightweight version for free)
When starting up Pycharm, it can take a while to load (up to a minute or more), which is somewhat annoying.
The initial setup can take a little while, and I found that customizing the appearance of PyCharm was very cumbersome.

Return on Investment

Built-in version control makes our code development faster and less prone to errors.
One of our main objectives in research is publishing novel studies, and with Pycharm's many features (including a great debugger), we are able to get code developed faster, allowing us to publish more frequently.
Since we have academic Pycharm licenses, the cost of the software is minimal. Overall, it has made us more productive.

Alternatives Considered

Enthought Canopy

I used to use Enthought Canopy, but I prefer Pycharm. I like the appearance of Pycharm much more, and I personally feel that it is more intuitive than Enthought Canopy. Plus, I have had great experiences with the JetBrains support team. When I had issues with installation, I received a response to my email within a day.

Other Software Used

QGIS, ArcGIS

Likelihood to Recommend

Pycharm is great for experienced programmers who want an IDE with many options. Since the full version of Pycharm is expensive, I personally do not think it would be worth spending my own money on Pycharm. However, if for those who have access to a license, it's one of the best IDEs. It is great for academic and non-academic work environments and could be used for research, software development, and student projects. With built-in version control, it is a great choice for anyone. I would not recommend it to those new to programming or Python, as it can be a little tricky to get used to.

Comments

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One of the best Python IDEs out there