Editors and IDEs

Pick one primary editor and learn it well.

  • VS Code / Cursor — general-purpose, strong Python and notebook support
  • JupyterLab — notebook-first workflows
  • RStudio / Positron — first-class R; Positron also handles Python
  • PyCharm — heavyweight, strong refactoring

Or choose an AI-enabled coding tool:

  • Claude Code (Anthropic) - terminal-based, popular editor that has set standards used by others.
  • Codex (OpenAI) - another good CLI-based coding editor.

For each, cover:

  • How to point the editor at the project environment, not the system interpreter
  • Recommended extensions (linter, formatter, Jupyter, Git)
  • Opening a project as a folder vs. a workspace