Best Python IDE: Sublime Text vs PyCharm vs Wing IDE

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After three years of using Sublime Text 3, more than one year with PyCharm (Community at home and Professional at work) should I switch to Wing IDE? It has some of the best features from previous editors. Time to compare them.

Sublime Text

I like Sublime because it is fast. Simple. It was able to open huge files when other editors just crashed. Opening time is instant. Multiple selection is fantastic and so on.. I am writing this inside Sublime as it is my default editor. After many trials with packages, and trying to make it a good IDE for Python I just settled with a few must-have. But in general more external tools, slower it gets, and even this super stable platform crashed a few times (git gutter is the worst of them). I like that plugins can be written in Python, but this type of hacking is not for me.

Plugins I use (I will not mention Package Control, I do not get why it is not installed by default?):

  • Side Bar Enhancements
  • Compare Side-By-Side
  • Terminal

That’s it. I tried Anaconda to make my Sublime a full featured IDE, like they advertised and it is.. ok (before my co-worker showed me PyCharm). I tried to install different packages manually, and I liked especially Pylinter. For small side projects that was enough. But when I started working with a bit bigger legacy code base, my Sublime failed. And I always wanted to have integrated terminal, well..

PyCharm

I resisted a long time before using it. And I think that for 80% of any developer need, it is an unnecessarily complex and CPU hungry devil. Still I am going to use it because of its powerful debugger.

Things I like:

  • Free
  • Configuration of environment
  • Debugger

Things I dislike:

  • Slow
  • I can open it only once per day, as it is eating 90% of my IvyBridge i7 and I do not even know how much RAM because I just make a break..
  • Searching
  • Jupyter notebook functionality is terrible (who would use it inside anyway, but I like to have additional negative point here)

Conclusion. Do not bother with PyCharm if your project is small, life is too short. On the other hand, it will save you a lot of hours as did for me when I switched from pdb (and ipdb) to its debugger.

Wing IDE

Some reviews on the web say that it is slow. Not true, maybe older versions but the current is pretty fast. Overall it feels like a middle ground in comparison to previous editors. It has missing debugger and terminal from Sublime and runs much faster than PyCharm. Nice. And Source Assistant is pretty cool (in addition I like dark theme Monokai better than Darcula ;)

I did not even installed it, just using portable version (which is cool). But the debugger is average (PyCharm raised the bar really high). I had problems with viewing data inside simple dict using Stack Data tool and tools like Debug Probe and Watch are enabled only in Wing Pro version. So it is a pain sometimes while debugging. Well, you get what you pay for. Looks like old print() never dies.

Pros:

  • Sleek UI and quite fast engine
  • Plugins written in Python (and lots of examples)
  • This is IDE (not like Sublime - even with Anaconda)

Cons:

  • Debugging is comparable to PyCharm, only in Pro version, and still not as good
  • Price for Wing Pro is similar to PyCharm Professional while functionality is worse than PyCharm Community

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And the winner is.. Jupyter Notebook

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More seriously

PyCharm while debugging (with Sublime keymap) and Sublime for everything rest. Atom and VStudio are on the horizon, but Electron apps are currently not comparable to pure C/C++ engine.

RAM usage while testing editors (single python file opened)

  • Sublime Text - 15-40 MB
  • PyCharm - 400-600 MB
  • Wing IDE - 40-100 MB