Editors/IDE

Spyder and VSCode (Visual Studio Code) are two good open-source editors (IDE). Spyder is specialized on Python and more oriented on scientific programming. VSCode is more generalist and lightweight.

Jupyter (Lab) is another program that can be used to develop software and notebooks. Jupyter can be used online but it is also very convenient to be able to install it and launch it locally.

It is good if you are able to use these different tools in the situations they are the most adapted. Finally, you will choose your preferred editors but for now let’s install them.

For Spyder and VSCode, just follow these two links:

• https://docs.spyder-ide.org/current/installation.html

• https://code.visualstudio.com/download (alternatively, see Codium)

Warning

On Windows, install VSCode only on the Windows side (and not Ubuntu). You will still be able to launch it from Ubuntu.

Hint

It is convenient to launch VSCode with code . to open the current directory.

Hint

For VSCode, one needs to install extensions, in particular extensions produced by ms-python and also ruff.

Hint

Codium (a community-driven, freely-licensed binary distribution of Microsoft’s editor VS Code.) can also be used instead of Code. In this case, you should use the extension Settings Sync.

For Jupyter, you can for example use Pixi or UV with:

Pixi

pixi global install --environment jupyter-ipython \
  --expose ipython --expose jupyter --expose jupyter-labextension --expose jupyter-lab --expose jupytext \
  jupyter numpy pandas matplotlib ipython \
  ipympl jupyterlab-myst jupyterlab-spellchecker jupytext

UV

uv tool install jupyterlab --with scipy,pandas,matplotlib,ipympl,jupyterlab-myst,jupyterlab-spellchecker,jupytext