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It is not builtin, but ipython will give you that and most features mentioned in the article.

by cdavid 4y ago

maegul 4y ago
Yea. The comparison with the Python REPL makes me distrust this post a little. Any Python user who’d be interested in using Julia is or should be familiar with ipython. (If you’re not, it’s a better REPL originally made to make iterative scientific like programming easier in Python, made by the same person/people behind jupyter, which was originally called the ipython notebook.) Yes Python prides itself on its standard library and it’s be nice to have a better standard REPL. If this were the point being made I’d appreciate the post more. But, Python is a large and diverse ecosystem, so having different tools coming out of different domains all sharing the same language is part of the value, so it’s not the most hard hitting critique of Python. That the author made such a point of this, in my eyes, make them seem a little too keen to dunk in Julia’s major “big-brother” competitor rather than being as fair and accurate as they can. Though, I haven’t read their previous Julia-critical post, so I may very well be overreacting. Still, use ipython.
- sundarurfriend 4y ago
  > Any Python user who’d be interested in using Julia is or should be familiar with ipython. I would have assumed so too, but the number of (reasonably competent) Python programmers who are shocked to know there are alternate REPL interfaces would suggest otherwise. I was lucky enough to get into Python when these thing were still new and shiny, so I came across ipython/bpython pretty early on. But nowadays the very fact that ipython is well-established means that people don't talk about it as much, assuming everyone knows about it, so it's very much possible that someone comes across news about Julia (which is still "new and shiny" enough to be in the news) and doesn't know about ipython. Defaults matter, and are the only thing used by a large segment of users, even in today's information-rich and one-tap-install world.
  - maegul 4y ago
    True! I remember "upgrading" from ipython as a terminal REPL to ipython notebooks when it was a shiny new thing. Since though, I've more or less joined the anti-notebook camp and use the ipython REPL almost exclusively. My workflow, interestingly, is a callback to how MatLab, R-Studio, Spyder (and probably other IDEs, especially those catered to data or scientific work) traditionally facilitate work, which is to edit source along with a REPL and some interactions between source code and the REPL for some sort of quasi REPL driven development. With ipython as a REPL, and the ability to just dump code from source into the REPL, I find notebooks way too bloated for most needs while providing the niceties of an actual text editor or IDE with all the normal linting etc that jupyter are struggling to provide last I checked. As you imply, it's a bit of a shame. Ipython (REPL) and the kernel interface are probably the best parts of the jupyter ecosystem.

It is not builtin, but ipython will give you that and most features mentioned in the article.

by cdavid 4y ago

It is not builtin, but ipython will give you that and most features mentioned in the article.

Yea. The comparison with the Python REPL makes me distrust this post a little. Any Python user who’d be interested in using Julia is or should be familiar with ipython. (If you’re not, it’s a better REPL originally made to make iterative scientific like programming easier in Python, made by the same person/people behind jupyter, which was originally called the ipython notebook.) Yes Python prides itself on its standard library and it’s be nice to have a better standard REPL. If this were the point being made I’d appreciate the post more. But, Python is a large and diverse ecosystem, so having different tools coming out of different domains all sharing the same language is part of the value, so it’s not the most hard hitting critique of Python. That the author made such a point of this, in my eyes, make them seem a little too keen to dunk in Julia’s major “big-brother” competitor rather than being as fair and accurate as they can. Though, I haven’t read their previous Julia-critical post, so I may very well be overreacting. Still, use ipython.

sundarurfriend 4y ago
> Any Python user who’d be interested in using Julia is or should be familiar with ipython. I would have assumed so too, but the number of (reasonably competent) Python programmers who are shocked to know there are alternate REPL interfaces would suggest otherwise. I was lucky enough to get into Python when these thing were still new and shiny, so I came across ipython/bpython pretty early on. But nowadays the very fact that ipython is well-established means that people don't talk about it as much, assuming everyone knows about it, so it's very much possible that someone comes across news about Julia (which is still "new and shiny" enough to be in the news) and doesn't know about ipython. Defaults matter, and are the only thing used by a large segment of users, even in today's information-rich and one-tap-install world.
- maegul 4y ago
  True! I remember "upgrading" from ipython as a terminal REPL to ipython notebooks when it was a shiny new thing. Since though, I've more or less joined the anti-notebook camp and use the ipython REPL almost exclusively. My workflow, interestingly, is a callback to how MatLab, R-Studio, Spyder (and probably other IDEs, especially those catered to data or scientific work) traditionally facilitate work, which is to edit source along with a REPL and some interactions between source code and the REPL for some sort of quasi REPL driven development. With ipython as a REPL, and the ability to just dump code from source into the REPL, I find notebooks way too bloated for most needs while providing the niceties of an actual text editor or IDE with all the normal linting etc that jupyter are struggling to provide last I checked. As you imply, it's a bit of a shame. Ipython (REPL) and the kernel interface are probably the best parts of the jupyter ecosystem.