I have been a long time user of JetBrains products for a very long time. They are very good, and I enjoy using them. This is not about how I am dropping one tool for another because one is better than the other. It is more about getting old and getting comfortable.
You see, Visual Studio Code has become my defacto editor for almost everything I do. The last thing I needed JetBrains for was Python development with PyCharm. But today, I figured out that I do not even need that anymore. The Python editor features in VSCode have everything I need.
It wierd, but I really never fully utilized everything that PyCharm had to offer. It is a really good developing environment. But it has one really annoying thing that bothers me. It takes so long to start up. Obviously this is due to the Java engine that it uses. But part of it is also that there are really a lot of things that you can do with the tool so it takes a long time to load everything, so at times it feels a bit bloaty.
However, that really makes a big difference when you want to change something very fast, and dont want to wait 4-5 minutes just to try it out.
This article really is about me simplifying my life. I had one editor for c#, one editor for Python, one editor for batch files, one editor for articles, one editor for HTML, one editor for CSS, you get the picture. Besides Notepad++ which I use daily for REALLY quick editing, I found myself using VSCode more and more everyday. I even started writing a extension for it to work with a Commodore 64 Assembler.
The older I get, the more I am trying to simplify my life by removing things that get in the way. Sometimes having too many options is a bad thing, and it was getting to the point where my goto option for Python was no longer using PyCharm.
I will miss PyCharm, and I will miss being part of the JetBrains family. Really though, its not them, it’s me.
I think Niel Sedaka said it best, “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”.