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IPython gets $1.15M funding

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Re: IPython gets $1.15M funding

#11
post #5

What's IPython?

http://ipython.org/ipython-doc/dev/overview.html Basically it's the Python terminal on steroids.

It is now much, much more than that. Besides the notebook (that allows you to mix python, images, math, etc... inside an html browser: http://ipython.org/ipython-doc/stable/_static/notebook_specg...), you get a powerful engine capable of distributing computation between different machines.

Re: IPython gets $1.15M funding

#12

What's IPython?

It's a python repl, it has a bunch of useful syntax extensions such as autocall(not needing to type parens after no args calls and around one arg calls) ? ?? for help summary, syntax higlighting, readline, tab completion, optional integration with GTK, Qt or wxWidgets toolkits(ie letting you build and interact with guis in repl).

ipython has a client/server model with multiple gui frontends including a qt one that lets you print out inline graphs and ipython notebook which lets you generate documents with code and data analysis/visualization. I believe the last part is what the grant is for.

Python has been used in scientific and statistical fields a lot lately and ipython notebook is quite useful for that.

Re: IPython gets $1.15M funding

#13
It was great to click through and learn that the funding was a grant. With that kind of a number, I thought they had raised a VC round - not that companies working on open source projects is bad, but it is always nice that they don't have to worry about a business model.

Re: IPython gets $1.15M funding

#14
The notebook interface is the natural generalisation of the REPL, and has the potential of being reused and copied by other languages (clojure, JavaScript) just as, in offline form, it has been used in Mathematica and Racket for years.

Re: IPython gets $1.15M funding

#15
You can try IPython (shell) and IPython Notebook (web interface) online with Wakari at https://www.wakari.io - platform (with all popular Python scientific libraries installed) that lets you run multiple Python sessions and access them online anywhere. It also allows IPython Notebook sharing - you can share your workflow.

Re: IPython gets $1.15M funding

#16

IPython is extremely useful. I like the qtconsole feature but i find it less than perfect to install: 1. pip install ipython 2. install qt4 3. pip install pyside / qt4 bindings The better feature, for me anyway, is the notebook interface (it starts a local web server and gives you a rich web guy, somewhat like a Mathematica idea of interactive notebook editing with inline charting etc.) But, that's a whole other bunc…

If you want qt, I would say your best bet is one of the full python distribution for scientific python, e.g. winPython, python(x, y), EPD, Anaconda. Everybody working on one of this is a user of ipython, and care about the notebook, and most of them have a free version available (free as no cost, not necessarily open source)

(disclaimer, I work for Enthought, which sells EPD)

Re: IPython gets $1.15M funding

#17
post #8

IPython notebook is actually one of the most interesting developments not just in the python world, but in computing generally. It's the first step towards the fully graphical shell on the internet that many of us have been looking for, whether or not we realize it. Being able to weave together text|markdown, tabular data (in almost any format you want) and images ( whether from matplotlib, raw captures, or synthetic…

It sorely needs some better tutorials, demos. The official docs are dry and dwell on technical matters rather than giving you some sense of the potential. There isn't much else out there - especially if you aren't doing scientific or statistical work.

I'm sure the iPython Notebook could be useful in my day to day Python/Django usage but I haven't figured out how yet.

Re: IPython gets $1.15M funding

#20
post #8

IPython notebook is actually one of the most interesting developments not just in the python world, but in computing generally. It's the first step towards the fully graphical shell on the internet that many of us have been looking for, whether or not we realize it. Being able to weave together text|markdown, tabular data (in almost any format you want) and images ( whether from matplotlib, raw captures, or synthetic…

Most of my programming these days is actually done in IPython notebook. Having an instant feedback is invaluable. I put my code in plain old .py files only once it needs to be imported.

I'm even wondering: if there was a way for notebooks to import each other, would I still bother with modules?

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