In 2017, the Python Developers Survey (conducted by the Python Software Foundation and JetBrains) found that PyCharm is indeed the most popular development tool among all Python programmers in terms of editors and IDEs.

As observed from the Editors and IDEs section in the survey, both editions of PyCharm top the result poll for the question—what is the main editor you use for your current Python development? The results of the survey outlined that 17% of all developers used the Professional Edition and 15% used the Community Edition.

As we mentioned earlier, two of the largest subgroups in the Python community are web developers and scientific programmers. If we looked at editor/IDE use in these subgroups, we would see that the two editions of PyCharm are still the most dominant Python development environment; 30% of web developers use Professional PyCharm and 17% of scientists use Community PyCharm.

It is notable that, according to the results of the survey, other widely used editors/IDEs for Python programming are Sublime, Vim, IDLE, Atom, and Visual Studio Code. These are all viable development tools for Python programming but they might still fall short in comparison to PyCharm in a number of respects.

In the next section, we will look at a number of core differences between PyCharm and these popular editors/IDEs, and why they help PyCharm emerge as the most widely used.