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Comment by vnpc1 | Hacker News Reader

> I don't get why anyone one who knows how to use an IDE would ever use a notebook,

The Python IDEs for data science are mostly garbage - if you have any recommendations, I'm all ears because I really don't like notebooks but still keep switching between jupyter and vscode depending on what I'm working on.

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I use IntelliJ for all my work, data or normal dev stuff, and it works great (all is python). Maybe there is just a workflow issue here where people are used to saving their data as they go in cells. I just write my algorithms all the way through, get a subset of data to debug against, then use the debugger to help me see what mistakes I made. I always run my code all the way through and only stop at the step I'm debugging. I like this better than saving the data from previous computations because I tend to refactor a lot and would need to rerun most of the notebook anyway. Also, rerunning it all the way through a lot makes me notice slow spots more than if I only ran that area a few times and saved the results. For me, this has the effect that those areas get more attention and my code is closer to production grade than if I had used a notebook workflow. My two cents, but give IntelliJ a try if you want a good python IDE.

> I use IntelliJ for all my work, data or normal dev stuff, and it works great (all is python).

Can it show me inline plots and allow me to embed rendered formulae written in LaTex, images and video in between lines?

This is the reason people like notebooks.

I have found PyCharm to offer a good trade-off between data exploration and productionizing your code. It has the best Python debugger that I've used. You can also run Jupyter notebooks in PyCharm when that makes sense for you.

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