ipythonan interactive computing and development environment act without doingwork without effort think of the small as large and the few as many confront the difficult while it is still easyaccomplish the great task by series of small acts --laozi people often ask me"what is your python development environment?my answer is almost always the same"ipython and text editoryou may choose to substitute an integrated development environment (idefor text editor in order to take advantage of more advanced graphical tools and code completion capabilities even if soi strongly recommend making ipython an important part of your workflow some ides even provide ipython integrationso it' possible to get the best of both worlds the ipython project began in as fernando perez' side project to make better interactive python interpreter in the subsequent years it has grown into what' widely considered one of the most important tools in the modern scientific python computing stack while it does not provide any computational or data analytical tools by itselfipython is designed from the ground up to maximize your productivity in both interactive computing and software development it encourages an execute-explore workflow instead of the typical edit-compile-run workflow of many other programming languages it also provides very tight integration with the operating system' shell and file system since much of data analysis coding involves explorationtrial and errorand iterationipython willin almost all caseshelp you get the job done faster of coursethe ipython project now encompasses great deal more than just an enhancedinteractive python shell it also includes rich gui console with inline plottinga web-based interactive notebook formatand lightweightfast parallel computing engine andas with so many other tools designed for and by programmersit is highly customizable 'll discuss some of these features later in the www it-ebooks info