PyCharm support for Jupyter Notebooks is simply terrible -- even after 2019.1

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I spent a couple of hours today working on a Jupyter Notebook with PyCharm and this is a quick list of the issues I found:

 

- BUG: If you add a cell and select the option Markdown, if you add a second cell, the IDE will keep Markdown selected in the Cell Type dropdown. However, this cell is a Code cell.

 

- MISSING FEATURE: Headings don't have the section numbers in front.

- MISSING FEATURE: There's no option for deleting a cell.

- MISSING FEATURE: There's no option for running multiple cells.

- MISSING FEATURE: There's no option clearing the output.

- MISSING FEATURE: No support for installed plugins such as nbextensions.

 

- ODD BEHAVIOR: You can't move up/down a cell when you're editing it.

- ODD BEHAVIOR: There's no clear indication of where a cell's input and output sections begin/end.

- ODD BEHAVIOR: Weird background color for Markdown cells. I tried different themes, but they keep getting a black background, while Code doesn't have a background color at all.

 

The support for Jupyter Notebooks seems to have been developed by a junior intern. Seriously. The interface is just six buttons and a dropdown. (Run Cell, Stop Kernel, Restart Kernel, Move cell up, Move cell down, Add cell and Cell Type) and most of them don't behave as expected and/or are buggy.

PyCharm is a great product, don't get me wrong, but this kind of things is unacceptable for a software of its pricing. 

 

[ UPDATE: 2019.1 REVIEW]

 was massively disappointed with the changes to Jupyter Notebooks introduced in 2019.1. They were advertised literally as they'd re-invented Jupyter Notebooks. The feature is lacking in pretty much every single aspect you can think of. Some quick examples:

- There are no visual indications in the editor that a cell ran successfully or some error occurred.

- There are no buttons. There are no options for creating cells, moving them around, restarting the kernel, running all cells, stopping the execution of a cell...

- No option for toggling the split horizontally/vertically.

- No option for a unified view like in the traditional Jupyter Notebook.

- If you're using a dark theme the output view is awful.

All they did is to enhance the existing editor to be able to open ipynb files and show the output on the right. That's it. Everything else (debugging, variable visualization) was already implemented and introduced in previous releases.

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Official comment

Hi,

UPD: March 27, 2019

Those who experience problems using our old Jupyter Notebook support, please update to 2019.1 and try its completely new design https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/download

Hello,

We have requests on YouTrack for some of mentioned issues:

MISSING FEATURE: There's no option for deleting a cell.  https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/PY-25430

MISSING FEATURE: There's no option for running multiple cells.https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/PY-25443

MISSING FEATURE: There's no option clearing the output. https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/PY-28277,  https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/PY-22149

ODD BEHAVIOR: You can't move up/down a cell when you're editing it. https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/PY-28503

ODD BEHAVIOR: Weird background color for Markdown cells. I tried different themes, but they keep getting a black background, while Code doesn't have a background color at all. https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/PY-15916

 

Could you please create requests for other featuyres/bugs so developers and other users could discuss them. Don't forget to describe preffered behavior in request description.

Thanks!

 

 

 

 

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pfff, JetBrain/pyCharm team; your jupyter implementation is a joke and you do not take this feature serious. These and other problems have been reported to you before many moons ago. Remove the functionality and spend your time on something you believe in doing or fix it for good.

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Agreed.  How can the huge number of new Python programmers entering the space as Data Science wannabe's ever get anything done without an integrated Jupyter notebook?  Seriously, do it or don't.

 

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So 6 months later no action on any of the bugs. You also still can't search within a single notebook (forced to search whole directories or projects) with any ease. This is very poor.

I'll add other annoyances because I can't be bothered creating bugs, I don't think anyone really pays attention. In addition to the ones mentioned above, a clean notebook cleared rendered in a web session will have random output still rendered in pycharm (even with a full reload). 

Execution doesn't halt after an error (if you do a Run All Cells).

Undo is buggy.

Pandas output doesn't render?

There are also tons of navigation issues etc..

This is sad :( as I like Jetbrains tools in general, and work in PyCharm for general python dev.

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Maybe @traff or @Paul.Everitt know who's in charge of Jupyter support?

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See @traff's comment above, looks like maybe 2018.3 will have working Jupyter support. :) thanks for the update.

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What is the projected time-frame for 18.3?

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Did we see any new support in 18.3 I tried to render simple Markdown in the Pycharm Jupyter feature and it breaks whenever my paragraphs get more than a few lines.

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Hello!

Thank you for contacting PyCharm support.

@mRWaffles, is this problems occurs in EAP 2018.3?

If so, could you please provide more details about it (idea.log, screenshots/screencast) so we can investigate?

Kind regards,

Sergey

https://www.jetbrains.com

The Drive to Develop

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Hiving issues here as well. 

After executing the markdown cell, the text just dissapears.

 

PyCharm 2018.3 EAP (Professional Edition)
Build #PY-183.2407.3, built on September 11, 2018
PyCharm EAP User
Expiration date: October 11, 2018
JRE: 1.8.0_152-release-1293-b10 amd64
JVM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM by JetBrains s.r.o
Windows 10 10.0

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Hello Fernando!

Thank you for contacting PyCharm support.

This is a known issue https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/PY-26560.

We also would like to note (as already done with official comment above), that we are redesigning it from scratch right now. I would say the new implementation is half ready in code. We plan to release it in 2018.3 so please stay tuned.

Kind regards,

Sergey

https://www.jetbrains.com

The Drive to Develop

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Any exciting improvement so far? When will 2018.3 be officially released with this Jupyter support redesign? Can't wait....

 

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Hi Patrick! The support is almost ready. Would you like to test a private build to see whether it's good?

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Hello!  I'm excited to see how the support redesign will look like. Especially, if the problems with respect to 'math processing errors' have been solved. Thanks

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Hi, Dmitry! Is there a place where we can have a sneak peek at the incoming features for the Jupyter support? Thanks!

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@Dmitry Trofimov 

Any chance I can test the private build as well?

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@Dmitry Trofimov 

 

Sorry was running into other things. Can you send the private build to my account email as well as instructions? I would more happy to test it out. Thanks!

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Downloaded the latest 2.4. Does it have the latest Jupter integration? If not, is it in 3.0 Early access?

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Just installed 2018.3 EAP and there seems no changes to Jupiter support at all. Is there a flag somewhere I need to turn on?

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Hi Ranqizhu,

New Jupyter support is not there yet, so you won't be able to find it in EAP build.

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Anymore invitations available for the private build of Jupyter Notebooks being worked on?

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Well... PyCharm 2018.3 is officially out and there's no mention of changes around the support for Jupyter Notebooks -- or any other data science tool for that matter. Please, don't even bother saying it had to be pushed out of the release the last minute, please don't. 

 

Source: https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/whatsnew/

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So is there a new planned date for proper Jupyter support? I was eagerly awaiting 2018.3 only for this, and now am disappointed.

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Me too, but I suppose they are not going to care about our opinions, they did the same with Live Share, both are most neccessary options, but I suppose they have a lot of work before they can add more functionalities to maintain. So we will need to keep using jupyter notebook + vs code and wait at least for 2019.2

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Hi everybody,

we do work on the new Jupyter Notebook. We aimed for 2018.3, but decided to postpone it to be able to release it properly this time.

We are almost ready to send you a private build for the testing. Please be patient.

 

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I would also like to be included in any tests builds for better Jupyter support since I'm a Data Analyst 

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+1

Was eagerly waiting for this too, but thanks for trying to make it solid this time!

I'm also interested in testing the private build.

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Actually, I believe all 21 followers of this post is happy to test it  :)

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Hi !

Is there any advance in this matter? I'm a data scientist and I like the IDE in general but there are some ridiculous problems with the jupyter integration, after 2018.3 the markdown cells seem to break with shorter line strings than before, it's in an unusable state and it's jupyter which is a hot topic in data science so I can't understand how can this be overlooked for so long.

 

If it takes the team a year to solve these problems I'll have to find another product sadly.

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