Smart Completion

You get suggestions as you type. You can further enhance this by the following:

• Collecting runtime information
• Adding docstrings to functions and methods
• Invoking assert statements

Runtime Information

Lets start with the easiest enhancement. All we need to do is check this box, and PyCharm will give you better code completion as you debug your program more:

If you ever get wrong suggestions for completion clear the caches. Running your tests in debug mode will also give PyCharm a better chance to get an understanding of the types that you're using.

Docstrings

Writing docstrings helps PyCharm, but also helps developers gain a better understanding of the code that you have written. PyCharm understands docstrings and uses the information in them to give you code completion and give you warning signals if it thinks you're being inconsistent:

def foo(a, b, c):
    """

    :param a: A for apple
    :type a: str

    :param b: B for ball
    :type b: str

    :param c: C for cat
    :type c: str

    :return: The answer to everything is 42. Remember ye well!
    :rtype: int
    """
    return 42

if __name__ == '__main__':

    foo(1, 2, 3)

In the example above, I've used PyCharm tells me that I'm being inconsistent:

But there's more! If you wrote docstrings, then PyCharm will give you a beautiful documentation popup about your variables (by using quick documentation):[2]

Assert Statements

assert statements can help tell PyCharm what types you should expect. Please note that, assert statements are not overhead free, unlike docstrings. I would advise using them in tests, so that the debugger can collect type information about your parameters. For example, the following will give code completions for a but not for b:

def foo(a, b, c):

    assert isinstance(a, str)

    return 42

This is because PyCharm knows about a, and that its a string, but it doesn't know about b:

Hippie Complete

Hippie Complete or Cyclic completion is best explained with a video:

Basically, it completes the word based on previous words you've typed in the same document.

Spelling Correction

PyCharm also offers spelling correction as a quick fix. If you misspell "massachussets" like so:

Then you can try quick fixing it with ⌥ + return. After you hit return on the first option above, you should see correction options:

This was a request on reddit

Language Injection

Language Inject basically means that you can inject other languages into Python strings, and have python recognize those languages. This comes in really handy when you're trying to syntax highlighting for regex or html, but it goes further than that often providing code completion. In order to get language injection, one must invoke the quick fix command inside string delimiters ('').[2]

Here is a video to demonstrate how language injection works:[3]

Font

Consolas is the only font that looks good on Windows, Mac and Linux. Consolas remains monospace regardless of whether it is bold or italic, and the only font that looks consistently good in PyCharm. I have tested this on Mac OSX Yosemite, Windows 8.1 and Ubuntu (14.04).[4]

If you've had success with other fonts (especially in Linux), please do mention them in the comments.

Braces and Quotes

A lot of the time, I forget to put parentheses around things or quotes around strings. By enabling the following option, you can select text, and when you press " or ' or ( or ), instead of replacing the text with the character entered, it will surround the selection with quotes or parentheses:

Case Sensitive Completion

By default, PyCharm comes with first letter case sensitivity, meaning that if you were to type e, Exception would not be offered as a viable completion. This is why I disable case sensitivity:

Please note however, that on slower machines this does make code completion slower.