Live data from Hacker News

Spyder – a free and open source scientific environment written in Python

spyder-ide.org

51–60 of 167 posts

Re: Spyder – a free and open source scientific environment written in Python

#51
post #15

I tried to use spyder on some projects, but the constant crashing without restoration of my work got old very quickly.

This was fixed in Spyder 4 by providing autosave functionality to our editor. You should give it a try again.

Re: Spyder – a free and open source scientific environment written in Python

#55
post #29

Spyder is great. More minimalist than Pycharm, but it actually allows you to run multiple Python consoles in parallel, which is strangely absent from Pycharm.

I may be misunderstanding, but Pycharm has supported multiple Python consoles (and running multiple files) for a while now.

Re: Spyder – a free and open source scientific environment written in Python

#56

The last time I tried Spyder, I think around 2015-2016, it really struggled with large datasets. A lot of pausing and hanging that wouldn't happen at an IPython prompt. Is that better now?

Yes, we definitely improved on that front. Spyder should be more responsive now.

You should give it a try with our new installers for Windows and macOS, which save you the trouble of installing Anaconda: https://github.com/spyder-ide/spyder/releases/tag/v4.2.1

Re: Spyder – a free and open source scientific environment written in Python

#57

I like spyder a lot for the variable explorer, which makes it feel more like Matlab. However the constant bothering about installing Kite got annoying. Unfortunately there isn't a way to use Kite and have it not constantly annoy you about upgrading to the enterprise edition. If Kite had a no ads plan for like ~ $10 a year it would make a lot more sense to integrate it in spyder.

(Spyder maintainer here) Kite is completely optional for Spyder. If you don't like it, you can uninstall it and Spyder will continue working without any issues.

Re: Spyder – a free and open source scientific environment written in Python

#58

I really like spyder for it's Matlab like IDE but I wish they handled virtual environments better. I also don't like that I have to install their kernel in the venv to use it.

Hey, thanks for the feedback! We plan to improve our support for virtual environments in the future. Also, it's really necessary to install spyder-kernels in every env to make the variable explorer and debugger work for it. However, that could be by us handling virtual envs and installing spyder-kernels on behalf of the users.

That would work too. Thank you

Re: Spyder – a free and open source scientific environment written in Python

#59

Has anybody used Pycharm's Scientific project type for data analysis?

Hey, a PM of PyCharm here. Justin case someone will find it useful and relevant. Our team is currently working on a brand new IDE (based on PyCharm) for data scientists. A big part of what we're doing is convenient support for Jupyter notebooks within the IDE. This new IDE is currently under development but already provides the support for notebooks similar to how the native web Jupyter notebooks work – cells and out…

As a professional data scientist and daily user of PyCharm Pro at work, super interested in this. Just signed up!

For what it's worth, our team is generally not a huge fan of notebooks, but I get why people like them.

Re: Spyder – a free and open source scientific environment written in Python

#60
post #29

Spyder is great. More minimalist than Pycharm, but it actually allows you to run multiple Python consoles in parallel, which is strangely absent from Pycharm.

I generally find it really hard to use full on IDEs like PyCharm for doing more investigative/research kinda work in Python, which is where Jupyter/Colab/Spyder are great at. It's just a very different flow, creating a large application versus doing analysis/research.

Personally, I can't stand Jupyter for research because the introspection capabilities are so poor and limited compared to working in something like Spyder, Pycharm or VsCode. Moreover, I much prefer having interactive matplotlib plots for data exploration in a Qt/Gtk window rather than the inline matplotlib plots in Jupyter (though you can sometimes get it work to pop up windows for plots, but you still have a more interactive plotting experience in Pycharm/Spyder/VsCode)

As someone who loves Spyder and used it a lot many years back, I've had no trouble doing all my scientific/algorithm prototyping in Pycharm while benefiting immensely from the astoundingly superior code intelligence/auto-complete/type-hinting in Pycharm. There is also a "Code Cell" plugin you can download for Pycharm that basically gets you to parity with Code-cells in Spyder/Matlab.

For me, the excellent Python shell in Pycharm that supports multiline copy-paste, tab completion, and function-signature overlays makes prototyping algorithms and ideas much faster. That paired with the excellent history browser in Pycharm lets me easily grab relevant bits of code and promote them into a script or function and go from there. And then if you are trying to debug any algorithm, Pycharm is far superior on that front and I am far more efficient at debugging and fixing problems in Pycharm than in something like Vscode (though I do recall Spyder's debugger being pretty decent since it supports integration with IPython)

There is a steep learning curve with Pycharm initially, but imo it works just fine (and for me at least, much better) in comparison to other things like Spyder/Jupyter.

I would definitely recommend Spyder to most non-software engineer Python users, especially if they are in Data science. Nothing by <3 for Spyder's awesome data viewer widgets.

Post reply on HN