The iPython Notebook is really amazing which is seriously under utilised and under marketed. Every "I will teach beginner to program" site these days creates a

The iPython Notebook is really amazing which is seriously under utilised and under marketed. Every "I will teach beginner to program" site these days creates a new platform which starts with "Enter you name in quotes" ends up re-inventing the whole server-client console thing. Not every one of these platforms does a great job at it. All you need really is an iPython notebook (which btw can also be used for alternative languages, there is a fork that runs ruby) which has alternative "markdown cells" and the "console cell". The tech behind the whole thing is rather impressive. It uses zMQ, Tornado and can connect multiple client terminals to the given server. This can be integrated for development with web frameworks like django/flask and can be very useful for debugging.