What makes a good plugin?

The most important thing is—whether the plugin does what it is supposed to do. If a plugin works for you, then it's a good one; however, this section will take a different approach to plugins. We are going to list what the elements of a good plugin are, but what do I mean by that?

A good plugin solves a problem that you need it to solve, but at the same time, it must be stable, well-supported (updated often), and compatible with your version of PyCharm (and the underlying IntelliJ Platform). Without giving you an extensive dose of theory, let's take a look at a couple of examples. We can get to the plugin repository through Preferences (Mac) or Settings (Windows/Linux):

The first thing that hits you when you explore the plugin repository is the star system. Surely, that's useful, but it's not the best indicator of whether something functions properly (and we'll get into that later). But for now, let's take a look at IdeaVim, which, in essence, is Vim emulation for...