PyCharm Migration Tutorial for Text Editors

Paul Everitt

If you’re a Python developer who uses a text editor such as Vim, Emacs, or Sublime Text, you might wonder what it takes to switch to PyCharm as an IDE for your development. We’ve written a helpful Migrating from Text Editors tutorial for just this topic.

The tutorial starts with the basic question of “What is an IDE?” The line between text editor and IDE can be blurry. PyCharm views the distinction as: a project-level view of your code and coding activities, with project-wide features such as coding assistance and refactoring.

This document then goes over some of the important points when migrating: the project-oriented UI, working with projects instead of files, Vim/Emacs specifics, keyboard shortcuts, customizing, and a discussion of facilities important to text editor users (multiple cursors, split windows, etc.) It then closes by discussing areas the IDE can really help, for example, the managed running and debugging of your code.

Of course, this document is just an overview. Vim and Emacs in particularly have decades of development and features, and PyCharm itself is now very mature with many features itself, so a complete comparison would break the Internet. If you have a specific question, feel free to comment, and we hope you find the tutorial helpful.

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