Vscode-jupyter: Spyder-Like variable explorer

[YashKarthik]

Feature: Variable explorer

The variable explorer in the notebooks is a important part of many data science IDEs, though vscode is not a full blown IDE I prefer it over others, its amazing. Vscode has a amazing features, just that the variable explorer doesn't feel/look so good, an explorer like in spyder or even Pycharm would be a nice feature and I'm sure many ppl would like that interface.
Thanks

[DavidKutu]

Thanks for your feedback @YashKarthik. We'll discuss this feature in our next triage.

[YashKarthik]

👍🏻👍🏻 @DavidKutu

[YashKarthik]

@greazer , the variable explorer in the vscode Jupiter notebooks cover a lot of vertical space, whereas it'll be more convenient if it were on part the activity bar and have a squarish panel when opened. Also a data frame viewer like one in Jupyterlab would also be a nice feature.

[jbiz25]

Spyder has the very useful ability of viewing all kind of Python objects in the Variable Explorer. Currently, VS Code's Variable Explorer is very limited compared to the type of objects one can view in Spyder. For example, if I create Python class and then create a variable that stores an instance of that class, the Spyder variable explorer lets me double click on the instance variable and see all attributes. And I can keep descending into the hierarchy by double clicking. For example, if an attribute stores a list, I can double click on the attribute and view all element of the list. If the attribute is a nametuple or dict or set some other built-in Python object, I can double click on it and it open the view of that object. You can also actually edit values within a list, or dict
or whatever and then interact with the edited values in the kernel. My understanding is that MATLAB behaves similarly (I don't know from personal experience). But the variable Explorer is one of the most-loved features in Spyder, so adding similar capabilities to VS Code would be great!

[jontis]

Yes! Though VS Code has come a long way, the variable explorer is still the reason I chose Spyder every time for Data Science tasks.

[jbiz25]

Me too. I find VS Code's current Variable Explorer is of super-limited use to me. However, VS Code offers so many other great features that Spyder does not. So, if VS Code could just close this one huge gap, it would be fantastic.

[bibinvargheset]

Me too. I find VS Code's current Variable Explorer is of super-limited use to me. However, VS Code offers so many other great features that Spyder does not. So, if VS Code could just close this one huge gap, it would be fantastic.

The above comments are very relevant and the redirected issue is closed. The variable explorer is needed for both the python interactive window as well as the normal python window.

Py charm has a good variable explorer and Virtual environment set up.