IPython Notebook is an incredible platform for interactive learning, and I used it as the basis of all examples in Mining the Social Web, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly

IPython Notebook is an incredible platform for interactive learning, and I used it as the basis of all examples in Mining the Social Web, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly - to go "final" tomorrow!) My one complaint is that it's still quite a pain to get all of the necessary dependencies installed so that both IPython Notebook and all of its 3rd party package dependencies that might be used within the notebook "just works" across all supported platforms. However, that's not so much an IPython Notebook problem, per se, as it is just some of the pains in the larger Python ecosystem. My recommendation to overcome the hurdle is to use Vagrant to take care of packaging IPython Notebook and all required dependencies so that you can provide a virtual machine featuring an IPython Notebook UI that "just works" once it boots up and you point your browser to localhost:8888. I wrote about this at length if anyone is interested in thinking about the Vagrant+IPython Notebook combination a little bit more - http://miningthesocialweb.com/2013/08/24/reflections-on-authoring-a-minimum-viable-book/ http://miningthesocialweb.com/2013/08/24/reflections-on-auth... - and there's also a screencast illustrating how easy it can be to get it all running in the way I am describing. In my opinion, there's no better way to reach the masses than with this combination of technologies. I hope to see more and more tech book writers jumping on board and treating the code as an OSS project with the book being the "premium support" for that OSS project. It's a win-win for everyone that way.