When comparing PyCharm Professional Edition vs WebStorm, the Slant community recommends WebStorm for most people. In the question“What are the best JavaScript IDEs or editors?” WebStorm is ranked 2nd while PyCharm Professional Edition is ranked 19th. The most important reason people chose WebStorm is:
WebStorm integrates with Node.js to allow for running, debugging, and unit testing of Node.js apps.
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 Node.js integration
WebStorm integrates with Node.js to allow for running, debugging, and unit testing of Node.js apps.
Pro Code refactoring support
To make sure your code can be easily maintained, you must first be sure to make it clean and tidy. This is the part where WebStorm really helps you. It automatically refactors your code by performing functions on it, such as extraction of variables, moving files, inline variable extraction, etc.
Pro Integrated code quality tools
WebStorm comes bundled with JSHint and JSLint. JSCS, ESLint, and Closure Linter can be installed via npm. They register as inspections and are customizable through IDE settings. They run automatically and will highlight potential issues. Pressing alt+enter on an issue will allow the user to view suggested fixes.
Pro Intelligent code completion
WebStorm has two types of autocompletion: structural completion and word expansion.
Structural autocompletion makes predictions based on its understanding of 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 Supports a wide range of plug-ins
Pro Maintains a local history
The local history feature in Webstorm tracks all your local changes in the source code that you are making. You can use it to view changes that you've made to your code and roll back whenever necessary.
Pro Typescript support
WebStorm offers typescript support for building typed JavaScript applications which improves refactoring and code completion, as well as helping to find bugs.
Pro Supports many JavaScript frameworks
WebStorm includes support for Meteor, Angular, and React.
Pro Reduces the amount of repetitive code that has to be written with code snippets
WebStorm includes a feature called Live Templates. Live Templates are predefined code snippets that can include variables. They're intended to increase productivity by reducing the amount of repetitive code that has to be written.
Pro Ability to base hot keys on previously used IDEs
When you install WebStorm, it allows you to choose from other IDE's for it to base it's hot keys on. So if you are switching from another IDE, it makes it a very easy transition and productivity is not adversely affected by having to learn new hot keys.
Pro Powerful git and GitHub integration
WebStorm has a powerful visual git tool, allowing for easy commits, visual diffing, merging, push/pull, rebasing, and inspecting the VCS history of a project. GitHub is supported natively - you can check out a project directly from GitHub.
Pro Built-in support for JavaScript task runners
WebStorm has support for Grunt and Gulp task runners.
Pro Built-in terminal/run tools
WebStorm (and really all of the IntelliJ IDEs) support the plugins throughout their plugin ecosystem which leaves you with 100s of tools to handle your automation tasks. There is a wide range of build-related plugins that help you by having pre-defined commands to execute with the click of a button. Out of any other IDE, WebStorm has by far the most coverage when it comes to tools for your development workflow.
Pro Theme support / tweaking
The theme is very easy to customize to your liking. You can change font-size, colors, highlighting colors, and more.
Pro Support for all major VCS systems
Webstorm supports not just Git and Mercurial, but Subversion, CVS, and Perforce as well.
Pro Multi-line select and editing
Pro Really good configurable code formatting
This integrates with other community tools like ESLint and editorconfig.
Pro Powerful Code Templates
Code Templates are powered by Apache VTL (Velocity Template Language) and allow for includes, custom variables, conditional blocks, iterators, and live templates.
Pro Special icons for most filetypes in project list
Webstorm comes with icons for many filetypes which makes it easier to find what you're looking for in the project list.
Pro Built-in web server
WebStorm has a built-in webserver that allows you to run projects from http://localhost:63342/ProjectName
.
Pro Has a built-in terminal
The IDE comes with a built-in terminal, a feature lacking in some lighter editors.
Pro Compilers for compile-to-JavaScript languages
WebStorm has built-in support for CoffeeScript and Dart.
Pro Support for Karma test runner
Karma allows you to execute unit tests and monitor code coverage. You can read more about using Karma with WebStorm here.
Pro CSS pre-processor support
WebStorm has built-in support for Sass which is one of the most stable and powerful CSS extension languages.
Pro Server and client-side debugger
WebStorm has a powerful debugger, with support for conditional breakpoints.
Pro Auto sync settings across team / machines / platforms
With the settings repository, you can easily enforce your development standards.
Pro Free for open-source development, students, and teacher
Non-commercial open source projects, and students and teachers (including classroom licenses) may qualify for a free license. There is a 50% off license for startups (under 3 years old). You can read more about it here.
Pro Different configurations for different projects
It is able to specify for example node versions, which will be used to run task for current project.
Pro Webpack support
Assists with configuration and understands module resolution.
Pro Cordova support
Cordova allows for building native mobile applications via HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Pro Dart language support
Autocompletion, syntax-highlighting, refactoring, and pub integration for Dart are supported in WebStorm.
Pro Coffeescript support
Autocompletion, syntax-highlighting.
Pro Low memory use
It may seem like a complex IDE and it does have a lot of functionality, yet it uses way less RAM than barebones-looking, Electron-based IDEs.
Pro Gulp support
Pro Interactive theme (color scheme) editor
Makes adjusting an existing or creating new themes a breeze. Especially due to things like inheritance, as well as easily exporting/distributing/importing the color settings which really only store where on deviates from the defaults (thus the resulting files are very small and relatively human-readable).
Pro Efficient and effective
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 Occasional slow performance
WebStorm can sometimes choke all cores of the CPU. There are numerous reports of high CPU usage.
Con Not free for commercial use
A paid license is required to use WebStorm for commercial use. The license terms changed in November 2015 and currently require a subscription (per year: $59 personal, $129 for companies). Students can obtain a free non-commercial, educational license good for one year. There is also an option to pay on a monthly basis in addition to perks, such as a fallback commercial license that can be used for free.
Con Not open source
This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified, freely distributed, or trusted for security.
Con You may have to fiddle with the JVM memory settings in configuration files
To get it to run properly, you have to edit the JVM memory settings when you use Node.js. Node.js makes the small JS project you have into a "large" project that requires more memory.
Con Plug-in ecosystem isn't robust
Every framework or extension with any popularity whatsoever will have a plugin for VS Code. Sometimes they'll still support Atom. Only one in twenty will have native support for WebStorm.
If you want support for the latest libraries, you won't get it in WebStorm.
Con Non-native filesystem causes issues
The Java wrapper around the filesystem doesn't actively watch for file changes (by, for example, using the fsevents api on OS X), and as a result can become easily desynchronised from the actual filesystem.
If you have an external tool acting on your project (such as a gulp task or a third-party Git client), what you see in the file browser or in open tabs becomes out-of-date. There's a feature in the context-menu for manually synchronising directories with their real filesystem equivalent, but this shouldn't be necessary and is annoying to do. You usually remember to do that anyway after you've been trying to track down a bug on a line of JavaScript that Webstorm says doesn't exist for the last two hours.
It should be noted though that this is easily remedied by going to File/Settings/System Settings and checking the "Synchronize Files on frame or editor tab activation" option. It's also recommended to more explicitly represent your workflow within WebStorm itself. Most external tools/tasks can be handled with WebStorm. And if it's not in a plug-in, then you can handle it with the File Watchers.
Con Proprietary file dialogs
Webstorm doesn't use the native Windows and OSX file dialogs, which makes it more of a hassle to open projects.
For instance, you don't have access to your favorite folders on the left-hand side in their custom file dialogs.
Con Can't open multiple projects in a single instance
The only way to open multiple projects is to run a new instance of WebStorm which is not ideal. WebStorm can use up to 1-1.5 GB of memory.
Con Poor usability on option and menu navigation
You need to press a combination of keys or navigate through different menu levels to carry out the two most common things a developer does. For example, to run your code, the default is Shift+F10. To go to definition, you need to click on "Navigation" first. There is no sense to this: being forced to press a combination of keys hundreds of times or navigating through different menus can be a waste of time.
Con Bad default options compared to the competition
Examples are an unreasonably low number of undo steps and automatic saving (which causes webpack dev server to bundle VERY frequently).
Con Constantly trailing behind on support for its main features
The Jetbrains team do an admirable job attempting to keep up with support for the features they wrap, but they are running an un-winnable race. For example, WebStorm 11.0.2 hangs when trying to debug NodeJS 5.0+ projects (30+ seconds before hitting breakpoint). By the time they fix it, 5.1 will be out and something else will break.
Con Newer versions are increasingly unstable
This only happens when it's not a major version.