Ask HN: I just abandoned my PyCharm subscription, what should I use now?
I was just using PyCharm, which I have paid for and used for many years now, and and an ad for their 'Cadence' product came up in the IDE as a notification. I have now canceled my subscription and am looking for a good alternative. The majority of work I do is with python and I'm looking for solid step trace debugging and something that integrates reasonably well with Claude Code and other tools like it. Above all else though I am looking for something that won't advertise to me. I am willing to pay, I like supporting software I use, so what should I be looking for in the age of Claude code, Windsurf and the like?
So I understand - you're canceling the subscription because they advertised a product they sell?
Pycharm is the best.
PyScripter. It's a native Windows executable, should be significantly slicker and faster compared to Java or Electron based bloatware. It seems to be quite feature-full as well.
VS Code has the second best lsp for Python (it’s proprietary), there is open source version of it as well with less features.
The problem with other editors is the lack of good and fast lsp. Pycharm’s lsp is so head of everyone.
In VS Code and other editors the lsp for Python is written in JavaScript which is hilarious.
I was also willing to pay to support a company that produced software I liked, worked well, and treated me as a valued customer
so when it advertised AI to me I immediately cancelled my very expensive corporate all products ultimate subscription
just using community for now
My hunch is VSCode or more likely Cursor. I’ve spent some time this summer trying to get IDE independent tooling running and have settled on Ruff + basedpyright. Also switched over to using UV. You may want to look into Astral’s TY or facebook’s rust based Pyrefly if keen to alpha / beta test.
I found getting VSCode properly set up and figuring out what extensions were needed a real pain in the ass and have never found something as good as Pycharm’s Git integration.
I think I need to try Cursor. I have held off but the world is changing fast and jumping into a more code assistant first approach may be a good answer. The thing that is driving me crazy in this world though is the 'tab tab tab' view that these approaches have. It is hard enough when predictive text tries to finish the word I am typing much less a whole sentence or code block. It is very hard to think freely when something is whispering in your ear what you should say next.
I am very hesitant to look at VSCode. I have strong push back against Microsoft related tools (related, best alternative to GitHub?) That is mostly on principle now though. I have avoided them so long that I can't honestly comment on their quality anymore. Everything Microsoft though long term seem so to...degrade. It does it in a way that when you finally realize you hate the tool you also realize you should have jumped 2 years ago. They are so good at finding the line where it is just good enough and just barely keeping you there, but not clearly above it.
Thanks for the suggestions!
Yeah, even to just know what's up it's probably important to try.
If switching between multiple editors you should look to include a .editorconfig file in your project to have 1 place to configure things.[1]
The following are the extensions I've found to use in VSCode / Cursor (these can be saved to / recommended to a project by being listed in the `.vscode/extensions.json` file).
* [2] Ruff
* [3] BasedPyright
* [4] Todo Tree
* [5] Rainbow CSV
* [6] Mermaid Chart (I’ve found Claude to be good at generating these)
* [7] Live Share
* [8] Even Better TOML
* [9] Error Lens
[1] https://editorconfig.org/ [2] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=charlier... [3] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=detachhe... [4] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Gruntfug... [5] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=mechatro... [6] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=MermaidC... [7] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=MS-vsliv... [8] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=tamasfe.... [9] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=username...
Neovim, simple answer. No subscriptions, no ads, fast, free forever. Have a look at the integrations.
I tried Vim and Neovim seriously for years. Eventually got fed up with plugins randomly breaking, and memory leaks requiring me to restart the editor multiple times per day.
I still use it for pure editing, but doing stuff like debugging and running tests I just don’t want to put up with it anymore and Jetbrains never breaks.
I don't use many plugins, not "fancy" ones. It never breaks, and it's certainly without ads, indexing, subscriptions, logins, enterprise policies ...
Agree! Bit of a steep learning curve in the beginning but once you get over that, it is a very productive coding environment. Check out the Neovim distros (e.g., LazyVim, NvChad) to get up and running quickly.
What does neovim often over a standard vim?
Vim's creator has recently died. He was the creayor and almost solo developer. Neovim has Lua scripting and a vibrant dev community.
Bram died 2 years ago (already(!!!), time flies!), so it's not so recently...
Also the community does an incredible job and it's quite active with further development and improvements, especially in improving the Vim9 script engine among many things they work on.
If you don't believe me, just see for yourself https://github.com/vim/vim/commits/master/
https://zed.dev/
I still use pycharm, but these days I satisfy my debugging with pudb (https://pypi.org/project/pudb/) which has been amazing and a good middle ground for the integrated debugger feel.
I really like a good IDE. I may try this but the all in one world is what I work best in. I'll give this a look though. I am always willing to try something not in my comfort zone.
Wing IDE is performant and I enjoy using it.
I have licenses for both Wing and PyCharm
I'm happy with VS Code.
Me too, including integration with GitHub Copilot
I'm so incredibly disappointed at how quickly JetBrains is enshittifying what used to be the best set of IDEs available.
I paid for the all products pack for nearly ten years. I gave up a while ago and I'm just stuck using my fallback licenses for the 2024.1 builds, which are IMO the last usable versions.
I totally preferred the 2024 stuff but it wasn't able to use 3.13+ which is a deal breaker. 2025 has been a horrible experience all around. Their filesystem change detection is broken, debug in async has basically stopped working and the rework of the menus and the git integration nearly made me fallback to 2024 and accept that it could barely use 3.13 venvs. I liked their product. I don't know what is happening but it seems like they have been going in the wrong direction.
VSCode here.