Effective PyCharm (2021 edition) Transcripts
Chapter: Why PyCharm and IDEs?
Lecture: How do you learn all the features of an IDE?

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0:00 You're taking this course because you want to learn PyCharm,
0:02 you want to be more efficient with it and you want to be able to use
0:05 more of its features. How do you do that?
0:08 If you look at this picture here and you're not already familiar with PyCharm,
0:11 it's got to be overwhelming. Yes,
0:14 I was scared back there in the background somewhere is something that looks like a familiar
0:18 text editor, but the rest of it,
0:20 wow, there's stuff everywhere. We've got this database exploration thing and the right.
0:24 Also the scientific tools, the project settings on the left there,
0:29 pretty straightforward. But if you right click on any of those things,
0:31 the options that come up literally fill the screen, along the bottom
0:36 We have seven or eight tool windows,
0:38 the terminal, the python console,
0:40 the run the GIT tools, all these kinds of things and that doesn't even touch
0:45 on all the menu options. Like for example,
0:47 here we're pulling up that we might want to do something like manage virtual machines for
0:51 testing our code in vagrant or if we get to docker all these different kinds
0:56 of things. Right? How do you go about learning these things?
1:00 Making an effort to use the features,
1:02 finding the ones that are relevant and so on.
1:04 I'm going to give you some tips and tricks to help you along the way.
1:09 It really comes down to how do you discover the features and congratulations you're in the
1:13 right course for that. We're going to introduce all the features that I think are
1:16 important or most of the features anyway,
1:18 that'll be pretty straightforward if you just go through the course,
1:21 but then you've got to recall and practice them,
1:23 suggest a couple of ideas. If you go to the GitHub repo,
1:26 which I will introduce in just a moment,
1:28 there's a link to a cheat sheet for Mac Os and there's a link to a
1:32 cheat sheet or common commands on Windows and Linux.
1:37 I recommend that you get that and you keep it somewhere at least while you're new
1:40 or you know, it'll still be in the repo later.
1:42 So you go back and get it again.
1:44 But this is a pdf that has all the hot keys and all the features so
1:49 you can scan through that and say,
1:50 oh look, it has this feature I didn't even know about,
1:53 and here's a hotkey, There's a plug in for PyCharm called presentation assistant and
1:58 it is super cool. I'll be using it during this course.
2:01 The goal, the idea of it is to pop up a little temporary flashing dialogue
2:07 thing at the bottom of PyCharm as you're interacting with it.
2:10 So, if I was doing a demonstration and I highlight something and I want to
2:13 re factor I could hit CTRL+T to refactor if I press control t along
2:18 the bottom of PyCharm and it'll say refactor hotkey=CTRL+ T.
2:23 So that's going to be helpful for you as you're watching during this course,
2:26 you'll see that green little box at the bottom pop up like oh,
2:30 that's the hotkey that Michael clicked.
2:32 But it's also helpful for you.
2:34 You'll see that if you click a menu item or a toolbar button,
2:38 that thing will also pop up,
2:39 tell you the name of the command and the hotkey that you could do.
2:42 So maybe the first time you use something you've got to navigate through,
2:45 maybe even the help to get to the menu to then run it.
2:48 But if you have a presentation assistant installed,
2:52 you'll see along the bottom. Oh,
2:53 I could have just hit control T instead of going over to the re factor menu
2:57 and then like refactor this and choose whatever you're gonna do.
3:00 Okay, so that would be helpful.
3:02 This presentation assistant would be helpful while you're watching the course,
3:05 but I encourage you to install it as well,
3:07 even if you never intend to do a presentation because it will highlight the features that
3:12 you would otherwise find through menus and toolbars and show you how to do the hotkey
3:16 version. Finally get some sticky notes or open your to do app or get a
3:22 notebook and write down the things that you really want to use.
3:25 You'll learn about certain things in unit testing or certain things in profiling or certain things
3:29 in the editor and just write them down and say today,
3:32 I'm going to work on using this feature of the editor.
3:35 So whatever I'm doing. Maybe I'm working on some unit tests.
3:38 I want to make sure I use this feature of the test runner and just do
3:41 that each for a couple of days,
3:43 strike through it or throw away the sticky note and put up a different one.
3:46 This repeated practice of the things that you really care about it will help solidify them
3:51 And if you do it for a few days it'll stick you.
3:54 Remember those features, there will be permanent and part of your new tool set.