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JetBrains announced extensions to its family of integrated development environments for programming languages this week. They include one for data scientists who use Python code to create AI models.

JetBrains DataSpell is available under an early access program and promises to deliver a better experience than the traditional Jupyter notebooks many data scientists use to write and manage code.

Speaking to VentureBeat, project manager Andrey Cheptsov said that the goal is to boost data scientists’ productivity since AI projects are seeing a significant uptick in enterprise IT organizations.

An augmentation of Jupyter

JetBrains DataSpell is included in this goal to make it easier to manage data and not let it get in the way of writing code. Cheptsov said it also allows data scientists to toggle between Command Mode and Editor Mode for easy cell and cell content manipulation.

JetBrains’ new IDE is not a replacement for Jupyter notebooks. It is more like an augmentation, according to Cheptsov.

JetBrains DataSpell should be compatible with Jupyter notebooks run on local machines, remote Jupyter, JupyterHub, and JupyterLab servers. The Jupyter notebook got enhanced too.

Making data science productive

Enhancements on Jupyter include an out-of-the-box table of contents folding traceback, interactive tables, and intelligent coding assistance for Python. Cheptsov added that cell outputs support both JavaScript and Markdown formats.

JetBrains DataSpell supports Python scripts and tools to manipulate and visualize data (both interactive and static) which makes following best practices easier.

It’s not just Python. The offering comes with basic support for the R programming language, with support for other data science languages in the works. Many organizations have deployed AI and seem enthusiastic about deploying more. However, they are concerned about data science teams’ productivity, who have to navigate complex datasets, which takes time. What JetBrains offers should alleviate some of that burden.