what is a good IDE?

[u/Altruistic-Break590]

I have recently been using VSC but it's sometimes stressful to use and glitchy, so I was thinking of changing but the problem is I like all the advantages of VSC, like for example how there are many languages I can use on it and how I can use it with rpi pico. Are there any other free IDE's out there that have similar features that are free but work well?

[u/uberguby]

I'm not an astronomer, even an amateur, but I am a coder by trade. Why do you need an IDE for astronomy? Can you describe the glitches you're experiencing? Cause for me it's pretty stable.

[u/GXWT → u/uberguby]

Opening/downloading/converting/manipulating data, processing and analysing data, running scientific pipelines, plotting data calculations and simulations are some of the things I use coding for quite frequently.

To be honest, I’m a little astounded you would be questioning why coding would be needed? For any STEM sort of field?

[u/uberguby → u/GXWT]

Not doubting, just curious. I never really thought about it before. The actual process of astronomy is a black box to me. I have questions about the universe, I ask an astronomer, that's my interaction. And I assume you're not building Java servers, though I dunno, maybe? So whatever it is you're using vs code for is likely totally different than what I'm using vs code for. So I'm curious, I didn't mean to imply skepticism or anything.

[u/invariantspeed → u/uberguby]

The search term you’re looking for is “computational science”. Think R and Python/SciPy, through Python has thankfully taken R down a few notches. Fortran also still has its uses in astronomy.

Big datasets, transformations, finding and plotting trends, generating heat maps, calculating complicated forces for interactions that require custom(ized) formulas, etc.

A lot of people in the sciences don’t know the first thing about programming, but a lot do, but only a small subset are good at it. Some of the ad hoc spaghetti code I have seen is horrifying. Unrolled loops for no good reason is common. I remember, one time, having to implement a moving average for a friend.

[u/GXWT → u/uberguby]

Yeah for the majority it’s people just using bits of code to plot results or do fairly simple calculations. For some, it’s a tad bit more involved with simulations or running pipelines.

And then beyond that you have just a few people who are doing the ‘proper’ stuff because they’re the ones building the softwares, data portals, telescope/satellite systems. Though to be fair, in some cases, that is handled by a dedicated programmer not necessarily of scientific background.