Though PyCharm is a Java application, in my experience it is very well behaved. Not the typical Java resource hog.
Contrast with VSCode, written in Electron. I will admit that VSCode is one of the better Electron apps in regards to keeping the UI snappy, but it still hogs literary GBs of RAM without even having any files open (CentOS desktop). It will consume a full CPU core just sitting there if it is not minimized, I'm told that this is to blink the cursor. VSCode is decent if it is the only app you have open, but it is just too resource intensive in real world computing.
actually your info is very very dated. this was an issue long ago.
FYI - I'm based out of India and a lot of interns,etc here can only afford AMD laptops with 4 GB of RAM and HDD. we are not even close to macbook territory here.
We actually moved these kids to vscode first. And then we realized how good vscode's performance really was.
yes - vscode is far far lighter. The autocompletion,etc is not as good as pycharm...but stuff like this language server will accelerate the progress there.
also pandas/numpy - vscode is not super great in debugging today, but the performance makes up for it.
The pro edition doesn't really have anything you'd otherwise get from VScode, and even then it's still free with an @edu email, or for OSS projects, or whatever other exceptions they have, so it's basically free
Contrast with VSCode, written in Electron. I will admit that VSCode is one of the better Electron apps in regards to keeping the UI snappy, but it still hogs literary GBs of RAM without even having any files open (CentOS desktop). It will consume a full CPU core just sitting there if it is not minimized, I'm told that this is to blink the cursor. VSCode is decent if it is the only app you have open, but it is just too resource intensive in real world computing.