integrated development environments (IDEs)

If all you want to do is done in R, your best choice of IDE is probably Rstudio. For all other purposes, you will have to look around and try what works for you.

Microsoft Visual Studio Code

VS Code offers a lot of plugins for all common languages, plus lots of useful plugins for other stuff (and all for free). It has extensive documentation, but the best way to get started is probably to simply download VS code and jump right in. Several people in our group currently use it, with the possibility to work on a remote project on a server via ssh a very useful and heavily used feature.

VS Code has a very lively Extension Marketplace that provides lots of useful plugins. Here are some that have proven very useful to us:

  • The remote ssh extension enables you to log onto a server via an ssh connection. You can then open a project folder and browse and edit files, while you can also open a Terminal / shell to run commands.
  • The snakemake extension gives you syntax highlighting for Snakefiles.
  • The Rainbow CSV extension gives you systematic per-column colors in comma-separated and tab-separated value files.
  • The Edit CSV extension allows you to edit .csv and .tsv files in a tabular view, so that you can create and delete columns and rows, and copy-paste things.

In addition, VS Code will often offer you to install plugins for filetypes you open, or for languages that you use. Explore.

Jet Brains

Jet Brains develops a suite of IDEs for different languages (just use the language filter on the right) and offers a free version for academic purposes.