Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

Python Introducing Lists Meet Lists Indexing

Posted by ja5on
ja5on
10,338 Points

using visual studio instead of workspace python -i, is there an alternative?

So i'm using visual studio instead of treehouse workspaces When dennis talks about python -i, what vs alternative is there if any Am I missing out on something? thanks

5 Answers

Jeff Muday
MOD
Jeff Muday
Treehouse Moderator 28,722 Points
Jeff Muday
Jeff Muday
Treehouse Moderator 28,722 Points

Make sure to learn at least one code editor!! And learn it well. This was advice I received from a Computer Science Professor.

There is a difference between Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. (You can tell the difference between them from their launch icon and the color of that icon. Visual Studio is purple and Visual Studio Code is blue.)

Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code are both integrated development environments (IDEs) developed by Microsoft, but they have different focuses and uses.

Visual Studio is a full-featured, heavyweight IDE designed for developing applications for the Windows platform (and to a lesser extent the Mac platform too), including desktop and web applications. It has a rich set of tools for debugging, testing, and deploying applications, as well as a wide range of features for coding and development.

On the other hand, Visual Studio Code is a lighter-weight, cross-platform code editor that's optimized for developing and debugging modern web and cloud applications. It's open source and free. It's designed to be highly customizable and lightweight, making it a popular choice among developers who want a fast and efficient coding experience.

I use it for web development because it is good for HTML, JavaScript, Python, and Ruby-- kind of like a Swiss Army Knife of environments. I tend to have "tabs" open on mixed code with JavaScript and HTML and then Python.

But I dabble in other tools too. I use WingWare on quite a few Python projects and my favorite because it is purposely built for Python (I use WingWare Pro, but WingWare Personal is free).

Watch this video on VSCode, it is a good tutorial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORrELERGIHs

ja5on
ja5on
10,338 Points

thank you for the video having a look now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORrELERGIHs

Jeff Muday
MOD
Jeff Muday
Treehouse Moderator 28,722 Points
Jeff Muday
Jeff Muday
Treehouse Moderator 28,722 Points

You're taking a good step on your Python journey by including a professional class integrated development environment like VSCode, PyCharm, etc.

If you enable the "Python extension for Visual Studio Code" written by Microsoft you can do breakpoints and examine the values of variables etc.-- something you can't do directly with "python -i"

You won't miss anything doing this. But make sure you can use the Treehouse environment when necessary!

ja5on
ja5on
10,338 Points
ja5on
ja5on
10,338 Points

I don't know how to do what you said

ja5on
ja5on
10,338 Points
ja5on
ja5on
10,338 Points

This was you first response You're taking a good step on your Python journey by including a professional class integrated development environment like VSCode, PyCharm, etc.

If you enable the "Python extension for Visual Studio Code" written by Microsoft you can do breakpoints and examine the values of variables etc.-- something you can't do directly with "python -i"

You won't miss anything doing this. But make sure you can use the Treehouse environment when necessary!

I said:- I don't know how to do what you said

and i STILL dont know how to enable the "Python extension for Visual Studio Code"

Telling me what visual studio is doesnt help me enable python extensions

Jeff Muday
MOD
Jeff Muday
Treehouse Moderator 28,722 Points
Jeff Muday
Jeff Muday
Treehouse Moderator 28,722 Points

Here are the directions.

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/extension-marketplace

0. Start Visual Studio Code

1. Click on Extensions (it is the icon on the left that looks like 3 blocks and a fourth block detached. Usually, the sixth one down, hover your mouse over it and the tooltip reads "Extensions")

2. At the top of the window, type in the search, Python. Wait for the search to complete, it will be the top result.

3. Click on the "Python" extension its sub-label is "Python extension for Visual Studio Code"

4. In the center window Click on a little button link titled "Enable"

You may have to restart VSCode, so follow the instructions.

ja5on
ja5on
10,338 Points

Thanks, it says uninstall so I guess i already have that software.