Google Colab vs Spyder IDE: which one is more convenient to use?
Last week’s topic in our data science class was both exciting and extremely perplexing. Thankful to have an amazing mentor who teaches us not so slowly but surely. With that, I was able to understand the basics but realized I completely suck at it when we were asked to apply in on our seatwork, which is to make a mini quiz or game. 40 minutes had passed, and I was stuck at an my intro that kept on looping. Unfinished works were given as a homework.
A simple quiz took me HOURS to finish without using the function in python as it’s hard to understand. I was about to pass it until I realized I wasn’t satisfied with what I did so it took me another few hours to finally figure out a bit about how functions work, and nearly cried when it all went well. THANK YOU, GOD FOR GIVING ME PATIENCE AND UNDERSTANDING.
Anyway, I’m here to talk about the few things I noticed when I used notebook (Colab) and Spyder IDE to run this quiz.
First thing I noticed was the header in Colab or what they call markdown in Jupyter. Using it was eye-catching and very pleasing, and also a very good way to make sections when coding. Unfortunately, Spyder IDE aren’t big on visualizations, so what you can do to put sections or header there is to type # before the comment or put it on the top. You can do that to notebooks as well.
Next is the power. Spyder IDE and Jupyter Notebook will have limitations depending on your laptop’s or desktop’s CPU or GPU. Whereas, Colab comes with a RAM capability of 13GB. You can check it at the upper right corner of your colab notebook.
Next one is the accessibility. Spyder IDE and Jupyter can be accessed by downloading another file from Anaconda website while Google Colab can be accessed easily on your Google Chrome browser without the need to download it. The downside of that though is, Colab needs internet connection to work unlike the other two.
Lastly, I observed that Spyder IDE is very meticulous in coding even the excess whitespace on a blank line has a warning sign. So when I input my codes from Colab to Spyder, this is what happened.
Yep, it’s flooded with code analysis warnings. (Check out how I turned on the auto warnings on my last blog. It’s helpful!) I tried to run it and the quiz still works despite the spaces warning but for additional learning, I fixed it and bwala! The codes looked good in decent spacings and indentations.
So that’s it! If I have to choose though between them, as a beginner, I’d pick Colab. It’s easier, more fun to use and not too strict with codes(although I need to be meticulous too, as it will greatly help me in this field.)
Spyder IDE on the other side, has this variable explorer which is a REALLY great guide in coding. Plus the 3 sections of it makes it look neat and organized. Sooo, for me, they’re both good to use.
Thanks for clicking and checking this out! See you on my next blog. ❤️
