When comparing PyCharm Professional Edition vs BBEdit, the Slant community recommends PyCharm Professional Edition for most people. In the question“What are the best JavaScript IDEs or editors?” PyCharm Professional Edition is ranked 19th while BBEdit is ranked 36th. The most important reason people chose PyCharm Professional Edition is:
PyCharm has CVS, Git, Subversion and Mercurial integration.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Version control integration
PyCharm has CVS, Git, Subversion and Mercurial integration.
Pro Catches run-time information when running the code
PyCharm can leverage run-time information when running your application with the built-in debugger to figure out what types can possibly be passed to which functions, etc.
Pro One of the best autocompletion engines around
PyCharm has two types of autocompletion: structural completion and word expansion.
Structural autocompletion makes predictions based on its understanding of Python and JavaScript objects, while the latter tries to predict the word currently being typed based on previously typed words. Word expansion also works in comments and docstrings and it's similar to vim's omnicompletion.
Both types of autocompletion work extremely well, have little to no problems and are quite fast even when loading suggestions on the go.
Pro Great pip support
PyCharm offers great pip integration. When opening a project it automatically checks for a requirements.txt
file in the root of the project. If it's found, it checks if all the libraries are available in the interpreter. If one or more libraries are missing, it issues a warning and asks whether you want to install any missing libraries.
Pro Free version available
There's a community edition (with limited features) that's free to use. You can also get a 30-day trial of the Professional edition.
Pro Excellent integration with debugging tools
All the debugging can be done inside the IDE. Breakpoints in the code can be added using keyboard shortcuts or the mouse. When the code is executed through the debugger a toolbar pops up with all the relevant context needed for the debugging process.
The whole process is smooth and painless and you don't even have to switch windows to do the debugging.
Pro Excellent refactoring support
There are many refactoring options including renaming and changing signature across entire projects. It also includes the an ability to preview changes before committing and exclude anything unwanted.
Pro Free student access to Professional Edition
With a valid .edu address students can register to use the Professional edition and enjoy all the perks of the full paid version for free.
Though it should be mentioned that the with the free student acess you cannot use PyCharm for any commercial purposes, even accepting donations for an open source project.
Pro Vim mode for people used to Vim commands
IdeaVim supports motion keys, insert mode commands, marks, registers, visual mode commands, vim regexps, key mapping, macros, digraphs, some ex and :set commands. You can find a full comparison in the IdeaVim reference manual.
Pro Great for navigating large codebases
PyCharm has amazing code navigation implementations. It supports both goto symbol and goto declaration. The former finds classes, variables, functions, etc by name. While the latter is used by moving the cursor on top of a symbol and by using the mouse or a keyboard combination it finds the declaration of that symbol and takes you there.
Both of these features are extremely helpful when consulting large code-bases and when trying to understand an API written by someone else.
Pro Automatically figures out what test to run based on the method the cursor rests at a given time
PyCharm, based on what method or class the cursor rests, can figure out what tests to run and perform them with a keyboard shortcut or two, without breaking up the flow and need to switch to a command line interface.
Pro Built-in Django support
Pycharm has excellent django support, from templating to management commands, it has it all.
Pro Easy to optimize code with built-in profiling tools
If you have a yappi profiler installed on your interpreter, PyCharm starts the profiling session with it by default, otherwise it uses the standard cProfile profiler.
Pro Remote debugging over ssh coupled with automatic deployment creates a streamlined workflow
The professional version allows remote debugging over ssh, which together with automatic deployment creates a streamlined workflow.
Pro Supports installing third party libraries
No need to go to the command line to download a new package, PyCharm has an easy system to browse, download, and update third party packages.
Pro Has a lot of plugins
PyCharm offers a high variety of plugins like Pylin, Mypy etc. covering all the above mentioned. Plus it has a built-in support to detect wrong formatted/named things (inspection).
Pro Amazing direct database integration
Pycharm supports SQLlite, PostgresQL, Mysql, etc out of the box and is integrated very nicely with Pycharm. Making database modifications could never have been easier as changing a cell value and committing the changes straight from pycharm.
Pro Sophisticated static analysis tools
Pro Stable development, been around for decades
BBEdit is commercial software, the paid counterpart to their free application Textwrangler. Though BBEdit comes off as pricey, this allows for stable and consistent updates from the developers. BBEdit has been around since 1992.
Pro Can open very large files
Pro Just about every feature is already built in
No searching for plug-ins that may or may not work.
Pro Great customer support
The developer is very responsive to bug reports and feature suggestions.
Pro Native application
Follows platform standards.
Pro Built-in FTP/SFTP browser
BBEdit can open files directly from, and save them to, any available FTP server. It can also open and save files directly via SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol).
Pro Great JAMStack environment
You can build the static site of your dreams without needing any external assistants. Although it does not process LESS, SASS, or SCSS files, BBEdit's includes are very powerful.
Cons
Con Very high memory usage
Memory usage is usually anywhere around 1-2GB and possibly larger with larger projects
Con Not suitable to edit project's files written in other languages
There is a high variety of support for a lot of languages like markdown etc. Not for Java and so on, but it is a Python IDE.
Con Some relatively basic functionality requires paid license
JavaScript, CoffeeScript, TypeScript, HTML/CSS, SQL requires a paid license. Also, all Python frameworks require a paid license.
Con Odd Autosave "feature", can't be disabled fully
PyCharm automatically saves your files for you, always, without telling you. You can't disable this. There's a way to indicate if a file has been modified via an indicator in the tab (not enabled by default - why?).
If you exit it won't ask you if you want to save the modified file. Totally unintuitive and contrary to all other established workflows. It's ok to try something new, but give users the option to have the "normal" behaviour of any other IDE/editor out there. Can be a deal breaker for those that need to know/have control over when they save their files. (PyCharm offers a history to undo the automatic save, but why force a user to undo something with extra steps that shouldn't have happened in the first place?)
Con Not possible to run scripts in a single console
Con It cannot reindex on the fly packages installed from git source
If you've installed a package with the command:
pip install -e git+https://pass@github.com/me/package.git@0.0.3#egg=package
you have two options available to make PyCharm update/see it:
- restart PyCharm
- invalidate caches
Con Asinine licensing scheme
JetBrains licensing, especially if you have multiple products, is a blocker. You just can't have a fixed line-item price (for departmental budgeting) for their licenses.
Con Vim mode is limited
Con Rendering is awful
Con Little native desktop integration
If you use Linux with Gnome or KDE, PyCharm does relatively little to integrate into your local desktop environment
Con Sometimes all autocomplete stuff dies with over 9k Java exceptions with no visible reason
Con Featureless
Con Expensive
It's US$49.99 a single user license.