Lesson 0: Introduction
0.1 Welcome 0.2 Office Hours

Lesson 1.5: Download Python IDEs

Cursor AI or TRAE

Cursor AI is an AI-enabled code editor that helps you write code faster and more accurately. To install Cursor AI, follow the instructions on the official website cursor.com.

Cursor AI costs $20 per month, but you can try it for free for two weeks.

Alternatively you can use TRAE, a free alternative to Cursor AI, built by ByteDance. To install TRAE, follow the instructions on the official website trae.ai.

My personal preference is Cursor AI, but you can use TRAE if you prefer. Cursor AI handles certain complex situations better than TRAE, such as researching the codebase to fix a bug.

Pycharm

Pycharm is a popular Python IDE developed by JetBrains. To install Pycharm, follow the instructions on the official website jetbrains.com. A free community edition is available, and is usually sufficient for most Python development tasks.

Why Installing Both

AI code editors such as Cursor are often good at generating large amounts of code, but not as good at editing or refactoring code, because they often need to regenerate the whole file, which can be time-consuming. If a developer has a clear idea of what to change, such as renaming a function or removing a parameter, it can be faster to use the built-in UI in a traditional code editor such as PyCharm.