Spacemacs vs PyCharm Professional Edition

Spacemacs combines the Emacs platform (with the full power of the Emacs plugin ecosystem) and the Vi keybindings (via EViL), all in the same box.

At the heart of Spacemacs, the configuration layers group packages configuration into semantic units that can be toggled on and off. The architecture is simple but powerful, allowing the user to easily manage configuration dependencies between hundreds of packages.

Spacemacs is the biggest community-driven Emacs starter-kit.

Documentation is mandatory for each new configuration layer and can be accessed directly within the editor in Org format.

Emacs runs on Gnu/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

Stuff like version control, file management, good default theme are all configured out of the box.

Space-lead key bindings are organized in mnemonic namespaces. For instance, buffer actions are under SPC b, file actions are under SPC f, project actions are under SPC p, search actions are under SPC s, and so on. Keybindings are consistent across the whole distribution thanks to a set of conventions.

There's no need to reach for the mouse again since Spacemacs can be fully controlled with keyboard.

Evil package is a first class citizen and Spacemacs embraces it from day one. Evil package allows Vim users to be productive very quickly while still allowing regular Emacs users to use Spacemacs.

Files can be edited in Spacemacs remotely.

Allows for great organization applications that can be saved in future-proof format, plain text, can be integrated with org, LaTeX, markdown, HTML, Literate Programming and be committed to source control.

Spacemacs has some great features for taking notes, tracking to-do lists, and tracking time.

LaTeX allows for auto-completion, syncing, and more.

Has great daemon support, which can mitigate the issue of slow startup.

Sometimes you only have terminal access, over ssh or something.

Syntax highlighting and org-babel extensions.

The community surrounding Spacemacs is very active and there is a welcoming gitter chat for users to ask questions.

Spacemacs got its name from the fact that it is uses the space bar as a default leader key. The key was chosen because it is easy to press and to hopefully lower the risk of RSI.

New functionalities and fixes are added to Spacemacs every day, while release cycles are short.

Elixir layer which uses the Alchemist package is the best way to edit Elixir code out there.

PyCharm has CVS, Git, Subversion and Mercurial integration.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Pycharm has excellent django support, from templating to management commands, it has it all.

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.

The professional version allows remote debugging over ssh, which together with automatic deployment creates a streamlined workflow.

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.

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).

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.