Comments on Fernando Perez: The IPython notebook: a historical retrospective

@Jimmie: no, I meant what I said as written, thoug...

2012-01-18T13:38:22.233-08:00

@Jimmie: no, I meant what I said as written, though perhaps it wasn't totally clear. The Sage notebook uses the filesystem to execute the user's code in hidden directories, so you can't try to 'cd' to one of your normal directories to work with some data, because the code that executes your cell will first move you to the private cell directory. Now, Sage obviously offers other mechanisms to manipulate local data and attach data to worksheets, so it's not like this choice is in any way a fundamental problem of Sage. It's simply that it leads to a *different* workflow than the one we have in IPython.

I just discovered ipython last week and was pretty...

2012-01-18T12:09:37.465-08:00

I just discovered ipython last week and was pretty blown away by it but having just tried ipyNotebook, I am absolutely floored. Goodbye GTK and all the pains that come with it. You've implemented 'true' portability by going the browser route with notebook. Much thanks and please keep up the great work!

One thing - you wrote in this line:
"The Sage notebook took the route of using the filesystem for notebook operations, so you can't meaningfully use 'ls' in it or move around the filesystem yourself with 'cd', because Sage will always execute your code in hidden directories with each cell actually being a separate subdirectory."

Did you mean to say "The Sage notebook (never) took the route ..." ?

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This is a great outline of the work done in past y...

2012-01-18T04:19:38.947-08:00

This is a great outline of the work done in past years. Certainly there was a need of such historical review of the dev process.
Thank you very very much for the time spent on this article. I now clearly understand the difference between Sage notebook and IPython, although wish they would become closely interconnected.

I love Sage and IPython from the very begging!

Fernando, Thank you for the clarification. I thin...

2012-01-10T01:56:26.741-08:00

Fernando,

Thank you for the clarification. I think that I was understanding what I wanted to rather than what was actually written. Unfortunately I don't have the skills to integrate Ipython into Lyx so I will have to wait patiently for somebody to do so.

Nevertheless thank you for the writeup and for providing ipython to us all.

Regards

Yannig

Thanks for the kind words, folks. It's been a...

2012-01-10T01:17:39.167-08:00

Thanks for the kind words, folks. It's been a massive amount of work, but it's definitely satisfying to feel like we're getting somewhere.

And please do keep us posted on how it goes if you use it in teaching or your own research!

@Ondrej: glad to hear it's working out for you, even though we do know there's still much to do. Creating a multiuser service is certainly doable, we just have been focusing first on getting a really solid local user experience. We have a small team and there's only so much we can do at a time :)

@Yannig: note that I was talking above about an outline navigator *like* the one in LyX, not about integrating IPython into LyX. That is another idea altogether, and one that I've also thought about. I hope at some point to have the time to discuss it with the LyX devs.

My first 'real' open source contribution was a Perl script called 'lyxport' to export LyX files to html/pdf back when it didn't work very well in LyX itself, so I have a special sport for LyX (in addition to loving it as a tool). I'd love to have more contact with them again!

A real ipython/lyx integration is technically fairly straightforward now that we have the full zmq protocol. So hopefully an enterprising LyX dev will jump in and just get it done in a weekend :)

Thank you for the history lesson, but even more fo...

2012-01-09T13:32:26.009-08:00

Thank you for the history lesson, but even more for the great IPython!

That was a lovely read Fernando! I am going to us...

2012-01-09T03:21:24.935-08:00

That was a lovely read Fernando!

I am going to use IPython for the next batch I will be teaching. Will keep you posted with my experiences.

Cheers,

Asokan Pichai

I am a practicing structural engineer and sometime...

2012-01-09T02:42:20.202-08:00

I am a practicing structural engineer and sometimes uses Ipython as a "fancy calculator". Integrating Ipython in Lyx would be fantastic as I could do my calculations and document them at the same time which would be a huge time saver. At the moment I do the computing and then write it down in a document and it always feel like doing the same thing twice.

What a great story. IPython notebook is a remark...

2012-01-09T00:25:42.482-08:00

What a great story. IPython notebook is a remarkable thing as is the entire IPython project. Excellent work!

Congratulations on such a great progress. I use th...

2012-01-08T23:34:58.877-08:00

Congratulations on such a great progress. I use the notebook to do interactive plotting on systems without a root access to install proper matplotlib packages. In fact, I completely stopped using the GTK frontend for matplotlib and just use the notebook or savefig() everywhere. I will try to use the notebook for any interactive work now.

How difficult would be to create a web service based on the ipython notebook, something like sagenb.org?