Entering the World of Code Editors

00:00 Python scripts are just plain text. So you can edit them with any text editor. On Windows, this could be the Notepad. On macOS, this could be TextEdit. Could be. But to be honest, using text editors like these for programming will make your life very inconvenient.

00:21 Instead, it’s a better idea to use code editors or IDEs for writing Python code.

00:29 A code editor is like a text editor, but with syntax highlighting and code formatting capabilities. Syntax highlighting gives your code colors and the formatting helps you with indentation when you hit Enter and you’re inside a for loop, for example.

00:45 So in this sense, code editors are very similar to text editors with a little bit of sparkle on top. But as you’ll see in a moment, code editors can be quite expandable.

00:57 So you don’t have to stop with syntax highlighting and code formatting capabilities. But with some extensions here and there, you can actually create a very powerful code editor.

01:07 If you want to have all of this in a package already, then you can use an IDE from the get-go. IDE is short for Integrated Development Environment and it’s an application that combines several tools specifically designed for software development.

01:24 Okay, but enough of the theory, let me show you some examples.

01:29 A very well-known code editor is Visual Studio Code or short, VS Code. One nice thing about VS Code is that it’s very actively maintained by Microsoft and it’s free.

01:42 What makes VS Code particularly strong is that you can add extensions to the code editor.

01:49 So that means you can extend your code editor to your liking, for example, by using the Python extension and other extensions that help you in your programming life.

02:00 That’s cool because you can customize your code editor to your liking, but that also means that you may need to customize it a little bit in order for the code editor to work like you want it to work.

02:13 If you want to have the full programming environment once you start the application, then an IDE is the better choice, and for Python developers, the go-to IDE is PyCharm.

02:26 Just like they’re claiming on their website, it’s ready to use for your Python development out of the box. That means you don’t need to worry about getting the right extensions in order to start Python programming.

02:38 But to be honest, when you’re just getting started with Python, both VS Code and PyCharm can be overwhelming in their own way. Again, one disadvantage of VS Code is that you need to configure and extend it before using it.

02:52 And with PyCharm, there are so many things present when you start it that it might be tough to know where to get started actually.

03:01 But with that being said, both tools are professional tools and in your Python journey, you will probably use either VS Code or PyCharm or another Python code editor or IDE in that league, at some point.

03:15 But if you’re just starting out with Python, it might be worth to give a beginner-friendly IDE a try. For example, Thonny. Thonny is a free Python IDE that’s specifically targeted at Python beginners.

03:29 That means the interface is quite basic, but also uncluttered.

03:35 And then there is also IDLE, which you actually may already have on your system because it comes with the default Python installation. It’s a nice start before you are getting into more professional tools to play around with IDLE a little bit.

03:51 So let’s do that in the next lesson.