Python as a programming language finds application in many sectors like Business Intelligence, Database management, Data Science, Machine Learning and Deep Learning, etc. This language makes life easy for every coder around the globe. The codes that are written in this language are general English words that we use in our day to day life. Now, to decorate these codes we have written and get fancy colors in our texts along with code suggestions, there are many text editors present on the internet. These text editors help in making programs more attractive and easily understandable along with easy execution of the same.
Some best free and open-source text editors for Python coding along with their download links:
- With the script package you can run python programs from the atom text editor and Terminal-plus open the Linux/Unix shell in the atom editor. To run python scripts in the Atom text editor, we need to Install the script package. Go to Edit Preferences and click on Install (File Settings in Windows).
- As we have discussed, Atom editor is famous for its ability to be tailored to user’s requirement. To do that, follow the given steps Click on the ‘Edit’ button in the menu bar and navigate to preference Click on ‘Preferences’, you’d see the following screen.
- VSCode is definitely not the only good text editor out there, and you’ll find that people have very strong opinions about which one to use (some people swear by in-terminal editors like eMacs, or Vim), and personally I used to rely on Atom (since github – which developed Atom – was bought by Microsoft, it looks like a lot of the.
Pycharm- All Python Tools in one place
Atom might not be recognizing the syntax of your code immediately. Check the bottom right corner of the screen to make sure atom has the correct language/file extension selected. You can manually select this if atom doesn't do it automatically. Finding the right source code editor can be a personal choice depending on your projects and list of requirements. A prominent code editor among macOS, Linux, and Windows users is Atom Text Editor. If you're wondering how to use Atom Text Editor, or maybe on a more fundamental level, what it is, we've provided a comprehensive guide.
The first one of the best text editor to start programming with Python is Pycharm. It is IDE which contains all the essential libraries of python and one just needs to import the same from its environment. This text editor is very user friendly in nature. How to transfer imovie files between computers. The OS platforms that it supports are Windows, MAC, and Linux. The text editor was built with the help of two programming languages namely Python and Java. It comes in two versions that are, a full-fledged version which is a paid version, and a community version that is free for users to download and work on. Other frameworks that this text editor supports are HTML, CSS, Javascript, Angular JS, etc. Also, there is a provision for debugging, testing, profiling, deployments in this text editor. The manufacturer of this amazing text editor is Jet Brains and the downloadable version of this IDE is present on their website.
- Platform: Supports Windows 10/8/7, macOS, and Linux
- Price: Free (open-source community version) and Professional cost $199.00/first year
Download PyCharm open source code editor
Spyder code editor
Spyder (Scientific Python development environment) is an amazing text editor that comes inbuilt with Anaconda installation that is a virtual Python installation. This text editor was built to make scientific Python related work easy. The editor is built using pyqt and therefore it can be used as an extension as well. It comes with some amazing features like editing, debugging, and data exploration within its environment. The text editor also provides a syntax highlighting feature that makes code very beautiful and understandable by the user. It also provides suggestions while writing codes and helps in code completion as and where necessary.
- Platform: Windows 10/8/7, macOS, and Linux
- Price: Free
Download Spyder Code editor for Python
Jupyter Notebook
JupyterLab is the most used open-source web-based text editor for carrying out Data Science related work and very good IPython editor where data visualization and Machine Learning related work can be performed. Also, the code written in this editor is very user friendly because of its cell provision feature. We can write a full code in different cells and can run the selected parts of it or delete the selected parts. The notebook is pip installable and is a part of the Jupyter Lab. You can extend its functionality using the plugins.
- Platform: Web + Windows 10/8/7, macOS, and Linux
- Price: Free
Install JupyterLab or access via web
Google Colab IPython console
Another one of the best web-based text editor or an IPython console that is available in the cloud. This is similar to the Jupyter notebook in its feature. The only difference that is present and is very unique is the provision of free GPU and TPU. People who don’t have a good GPU laptop can use Google Colaboratory’s free GPU and can run various Deep Learning programs. The GPU service available to the user is valid for 12 hours and after that, the user needs to again start his work. This cloud editor also contains all the important libraries of python like Numpy, Pandas, Scikitlearn, Tensorflow, Pytorch, etc. So, with this notebook being used there is no need to download Python packages separately.
- Platform: Web-based, thus support all available operating systems via the browser.
- Price: Free
Download Google Colab
Sublime Text – Code editor
Atom Editor Tutorial
This is a very lightweight and cool text editor that is free to all. This editor can be used for various programming languages like Python, Java, Perl, C#, C++, and many more. The user just needs to select his/her desired language he wants to work in from the dropdown options given in Sublime text and then start coding. This text editor also provides color highlighting to our codes. Because of this, the code looks beautiful and interactive. This text editor also has features like code auto-completion and syntax correction. This is one of the most used text editors by all Python developers.
- Platforms: This editor is compatible with all OS platforms like Windows 10/8/7, Linux, and Mac, etc.
- Price: Free
Visual Studio Code IDE
This is the standard widely used and one of the top free source-code editor for Python or carrying out any type of code development using various programming languages. It has plugins for various languages that we need to download and start our work. This text editor has Intelli sense property and helps in completing syntax based on function definition, types of variables, etc. Also, there is a syntax highlighting feature present in this editor. The interface is very interactive and provides multi-language support within its console. It is compatible with Git and one can easily commit operations in Git with the help of this text editor. Also, there is a multi-window split option in this editor which allows any developer to run different programs in parallel with others.
- Platforms supported: Windows 10/8/7, Linux, and macOS
- Price: Free
Download Visual Studio Code editor for free
Atom – Hackable code editor
Another free and open-source customizable text editor most preferred by Python developers. This web application is built using Node.js and supports various programming languages by downloading the respective plugins. Like all text editors mentioned above, this one also supports different OS and therefore possesses cross-platform functionality. It is also an open-source editor and can be downloaded from the website of Atom along with themes to change the look and feel of it.
- Platforms supported: Windows 10/8/7, Linux, and macOS
- Price: Free and open-source
Download Atom code editor
Conclusion
There are many more text editors that are present in the market and one can choose any text editor that he/she is comfortable with and can start their coding journey. So, before downloading please go through the proper documentation and the number of features the editor possess.
Atom is a free and publicly accessible source code editor. It is supported by macOS, Linux, and Microsoft Windows. It’s not just a simple text editor. It has everything that would make a developer’s day. True to its word, it is a hackable text editor with support from thousands of open source packages that will add to it, all your desirable custom functionalities and features. You can also create a package by yourself and provide it to Atom community for use. Its UI can be customized as well with pre-installed four UI and eight syntax themes in both dark and light colors and if you can’t still find aesthetically pleasing to your liking you can always install themes created by ATOM community or make your own. Other features include multiple panes, smart autocompletion, and basically, its default settings are so good, one can download this thing and get to work immediately.One excellent feature that atom supports is it Git and GitHub. You can
- create new branches
- stage and commit
- Push
- Pull
- resolve merge conflicts
- view pull requests and so much more, all from within your editor
The GitHub package is already bundled with Atom, so you can start right away.
The only downside for Atom text editor is that, it can be noticeably slow and can not be very good for heavy files, as that slows down it’s performance most of the time.
In this article we are not only going to discuss, how to install Atom but also how to install packages and the working of Atom text editor.
Step by step Installation of Atom Editor
Firstly, you’ll have to go to Atom editor official webpage using the this link. Following page would be displayed to you.
Click on ‘Download .deb’ and save the file in your desired location, for me it’s ‘Downloads’.
After your file is saved. Open your terminal and run the following command to install the package.
How To Use Atom Text Editor For Python Ide
The installation process would start.
You can also install Atom via snap. But for that to work, make sure snap is installed on your system. To install via snap, use the following command
Once the installation is complete, launch Atom. Following would be displayed.
A guide to install packages on Atom Editor
As we have discussed, Atom editor is famous for its ability to be tailored to user’s requirement. To do that, follow the given steps
Click on the ‘Edit’ button in the menu bar and navigate to preference
Click on ‘Preferences’, you’d see the following screen
Now Navigate to ‘Install’ and click on it. A search box would appear. Write the name of package. Your desired package would be installed in ‘/home/zoe/.atom/packages’.
How to select text, copy text and paste text?
Selection of text is required for us to copy, format, delete and move. Just about all editing and formatting job begins through selecting something. The easiest way to select text is through pressing ‘Shift’ + ‘↑’
To Copy text use, ‘Ctrl’+ ’Insert’ How to watch tv on windows 7.
To Cut text, click ‘Shift’ +’Delete’
And to paste text, use ‘Shift’ + ‘Insert’
How to use ‘Autocomplete’ in Atom?
Autocomplete, or word completion, is a feature that everyone is familiar with as almost every device supports it and we often rely on it. A text book definition would be ‘application predicts the rest of a word a user is typing’. It works for Atom as it does for any application, user typically enters a few characters and the application suggests keywords.
An example is shown in screenshot below
How to create and use snippets?
Atom has an excellent feature ‘built-in code snippets. It should be noted that Atom only shows you snippets for a particular scope for which you’re coding. For example, if you are working on a file with .html extension, only snippets belonging to the HTML will be available for that file.
To check all snippets for the current scope, click on ‘Packages’ and then select ‘Snippets’
By selecting a snippet from the drop-down list, Atom inserts the entire snippet into the editor without any further ado. Below screenshots show screen for selection of ‘todo’
To create a new snippet
To create a single-line code snippet, you are required to add to the snippets.cson file
- the scope
- the name
- the prefix
- body of the snippet
Following is an example for its syntax.
Example
In the above given screenshot, what we are doing is that, we are making a snippet that will add an <h2> tag with the class ‘custom-title’ to the HTML scope.
Now after typing the above example, save the configuration file. From now on, whenever you’ll type the prefix and click the Tab key, editor will paste the snippet body. Notice that autocomplete result box shows the name of the snippet.
Multi-line code snippets are same as that of single-line however it uses a bit different syntax. The data used would be same.
However the difference here is that the snippet body will be surrounded by three double quotes i.e. “””
In snippets.cson, the snippet must have a dot/period added at the start of that string. Common web-language scopes include:
Search and Replace
Searching and replacing text in your file or project is quick and easy in Atom. Following are the commands used.
‘Ctrl’+’F’ – This command will search within file.
‘Ctrl’+’Shift’+’F’ – This command will search within the entire project.
By using any of these commands, you’ll see the following UI with the panel at the bottom of screen.
To search within your current buffer,
- you will press ‘Ctrl’+’F’,
- type in a search string and press Enter
- press ‘F3’ to keep searching in that file.
- ‘Alt’+’Enter’ will find all occurrences of the search string
If you type string in Replace textbox, it will replace the text with the string text.
How to work multiple panes?
Editor pane can split to horizontal alignment or vertical alignment. For that action,
- Use Ctrl+K + ↑
- Use Ctrl+K + ↓
- Use Ctrl+K + ←
- Use Ctrl+K + →
The direction key shows the direction in which you want to split the pane. Once you split panes, you can move between them with the above commands, and it will focus on its respective pane.
The below example for splitting screen in above direction.
Syntax highlighting for python
How to insert image in adobe photoshop cs3. For this to work, firstly make sure you have ‘Langauge-python’ package enabled. Afterwards, open a python file, for example here I am using ‘demo.PY’.
You’d notice that syntax highlighted, thus refining the readability of the text; especially for codes that could span to numerous pages. Below is an example,
Moving in Atom
While it is quite easy to move within Atom, you will always need some help regarding key binding shortcuts that will save you a lot of time. Here is a link for the most common movements within the Atom along with some other amazing shortcuts.
Git and GitHub with Atom
For Git operations, you don’t need to install anything further. Atom by default contains integration for git. Atom consist two tabs, tab one for Git and tab two for GitHub.
One way we can access them either by clicking the ‘View’ and selecting Toggle Git Tab / Toggle GitHub Tab menus in the top menu bar. Another alternative is hotkeys.
- Git Tab: ‘Ctrl’ + ‘Shift’ + ‘9’
- GitHub Tab: ‘Ctrl’ + ‘Shift’ + ‘8’
To create a new repository, click on ‘Create Repository’ button, enter the name the repository and then click on ‘Init’ button.
And that’s was the process of initializing your git repository.
So now you’ll notice a UI like following
The staged and unstaged changes are shown below each other on the side of the screen, also one can make a commit at any moment.
So that’s how Atom editor facilitates developers and becomes a worth-while user experience. This article gave you an insight of how cool Atom editor can be with all of it’s features that brought revelation among programming community. Thank you for reading this article.