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IPython gets $1.15M funding

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Re: IPython gets $1.15M funding

#51

Post by takluyver »

vitalique wrote: post #39
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested in installing EPD, but it seems to want to install in my C:\Python27 directory (I'm on Windows here at work). Will this overwrite or otherwise interrupt my existing Python installation?

As far as I can remember - yes, it will try to overwrite your Python dir, at least it did for me on my Windows machine (I backed up my original C:\Python27 before trying EPD, and then had to restore it, IIRC; there was also some mess with paths, but nothing incurable). I also tried installing EPD into its own directory, but Windows EPD package failed to run Notebook anyways (some issues with Tornado), and I was just…

The only libraries you should need to run the notebook are pyzmq and tornado, both of which you can download for Windows from Christoph Gohlke's page: http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/

That said, it's very easy to get it going on EC2, especially with Notebookcloud.

Re: IPython gets $1.15M funding

#53

Post by dalke »

Apreche wrote: post #44

Why does IPython get all the love? I tried it out back in the day, but it was not very impressive. bpython is much better, but doesn't seem to get as much attention.

I know little about bpython. I have observed that IPython has very good outreach. Fernando Pérez has promoted IPython at many conferences, helped a lot of people, been responsive to requests, active in the Python community, and all of the other factors that help make a successful project.

It's also been around longer than bpython. IPython started in 2001 while bpython is from 2009.

The current IPython has several GUI interfaces, including through a web browser, with the goal of supporting a graphical notebook with embedded plots and other images. bpython does not support that.

There are very few tools in the extended REPL space. I think software developers don't spend as much time on the interactive shell as computational scientists, and those developers that do may augment the shell with, say, the emacs shell rather than develop a new interactive interface. So an early tool which works reasonably well, which has been around for a while, with few competitors, and has outreach and updates based on user needs, will tend to be more widely used.

Re: IPython gets $1.15M funding

#54

Post by 3amOpsGuy »

VMG wrote: post #48
3amOpsGuy wrote: post #7

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…

I'm sure it's useful, but is it extremely useful? I can imagine living without it, even when programming Python. I'm surprised to be honest but maybe I'm missing something.

>> I'm surprised to be honest but maybe I'm missing something.

Give it a proper whirl, you'll never go back.

Proper python REPL history across sessions (not hacking up a substitute using a $PYTHONSTARTUP file to load readline history and register an at exit handler to dump history). History becomes as useful as a large shell history (i'm sure i did something similar last year, what was it?...)

In line charting, makes visualising any random thing (runtime of function, memory usage etc.) so easy you'll start doing it all the time.

The webserver notebook can stream line collaboration with co-workers. I like the ability to make "interactive documentation", although truth be told i haven't used this as much as i could yet.

Re: IPython gets $1.15M funding

#55

Post by dalke »

VMG wrote: post #48
3amOpsGuy wrote: post #7

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…

I'm sure it's useful, but is it extremely useful? I can imagine living without it, even when programming Python. I'm surprised to be honest but maybe I'm missing something.

My first shell was csh. I put off switching to tcsh, but eventually did. After a while I grew used to the new features of tcsh, with tab completion being the most obvious. I then went back to csh on some machine and realized just how dependent on was on tab completion. It became frustrating to type all of the filename again, rather than just the first few characters follows perhaps by some another character+ for disambiguation.

I don't want to go back to a shell without tab completion. Is tab completion extremely useful? Functionally, no. I can live without it. But I will avoid that if at all possible, and that's not something I felt before I used tab-completion.

I get the sense that IPython is the same way. It's not essential, but after many have used it they have the sense that they don't ever want to be without again.

Re: IPython gets $1.15M funding

#56

Post by tdfx »

I was lucky enough to find IPython early on when I started with Python. I'm constantly amazed with its feature set. Some cool things I found useful:

The "run" command for running python scripts:

* -t to print timing information

* -p to print profiling info from profiler module

* -d run the script under pdb interactively (with -b to set line breakpoints)

* -n to set __name__

All of these things can be done fairly easily on their own, but doing it through IPython makes the output so much easier to read and work with.

Whenever I'm working with data I need to visualize, I like to use:

  ipython qtconsole --pylab=inline
to get a terminal-like window that has inline graphs from matplotlib functions.

Re: IPython gets $1.15M funding

#57

Post by dalke »

winter_blue wrote: post #42

When will we hear about PyPy getting a similar amount of funding? It's a great project, and lack of funding has prevented them from delivering on Py3k.

PyPy had 1,353,000 euro in EU funding, so they have received a similar amount already. However, pypy is also a much more ambitious project, and needs a lot more funding than IPython to achieve its full goals.

Re: IPython gets $1.15M funding

#58

Post by cing »

sillysaurus wrote: post #38
lars512 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Executable documents are powerful tools for teaching and learning. Focus in this area will pay off all across the Python community.

Executable documents are powerful tools for teaching and learning. These already exist, though, and the ecosystem already has a lot of support and momentum behind it: javascript within the browser. Would you explain what some of the benefits are in comparison to this? I'm an outsider so I don't have a very firm understanding of what the implications are.

I'm very optimistic about iPython as the solution for "executable documents", much so over Javascript by itself (despite all of Bret Victor's amazing efforts).

There is a development branch of iPython by Brian Granger that emits JSON when you display a python object in the notebook. You can easily create handlers that display any Python object using javascript. That means D3.js or whatever HTML5/WebGL app you can throw in there becomes the front-end to a very powerful numerical computation back-end. Check out this demonstration I help code, http://www.flickr.com/photos/47156828@N06/8183294725

Re: IPython gets $1.15M funding

#59

Post by speg »

This might be a silly question, and perhaps not the place for it, apologies in advance.

Love iPython, except for one thing I can't seem to figure out.

  print "Hello World"
hit up arrow to recall previous line, press ctrl+a to try and jump to the beginning of the line but instead my cursor jumps to a new empty line on the right side of the screen?

What is going on?! I don't get how this split is supposed to work and it always throws me in it when I least expect it. I just want to do a simple edit to my previous command :(

Re: IPython gets $1.15M funding

#60

Post by hogu »

Apreche wrote: post #44

Why does IPython get all the love? I tried it out back in the day, but it was not very impressive. bpython is much better, but doesn't seem to get as much attention.

Do you work in scientific computing? I think if you did, then you would understand

- Will bpython allow me to control a cluster of python processes to perform my scientific computation?

- Will bpython allow me to create executable documents mixing markdown as well as LaTeX so that I can display mathematical equations?

- Does bpython have integrated matplotlib support, so that the GUI thread of matplotlib runs in a separate thread and won't block the interpreter?

IPython is much more than just an interactive shell, even though the name doesn't suggest more than that.

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