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I mostly agree with this article, but we are not there yet. I work with scientists who love the IPython Notebook technology. Some claim the IP[y]: Notebook to b

I mostly agree with this article, but we are not there yet. I work with scientists who love the IPython Notebook technology. Some claim the IP[y]: Notebook to be the best thing since the Mosaic web browser and the most important development in scientific computing in a decade. I tend to agree, it is a revolutionary technology and the idea of executable papers is tantalizing. But there are also big problems. In particular, setting up a Python environment with all the necessary libraries is a real pain in the neck even with technologies like pip. For a fee, companies like Enthought are making good progress at taking the pain away (though what happens when you have awkward custom dependencies?). Cloud solutions for preconfigured IP[y]: Notebook servers is another exciting possibility, but not ideal if you work with big data where you want your data local to your Python environment. Also, as I understand, taking advantage of multicore parallelism is not trivial because of the Python Global Interpreter Lock. I have also worked in JVM environments where parallel computing is becoming significantly easier and I don't see that happening in Python anytime soon. I would love to be proven wrong, of course.

dkersten 13y ago
Re: setting up environment, I love Anaconda for that reason. Wget the installer, run it, all done - you have a fully featured Python environment ready to go, including Numpy, Scipy, Scikit-learn and much more. Running IPython and the IPython Notebook is then trivial. If you need anything else, you can use their own Conda package manager, or you can just use pip as usual.
- julienchastang 13y ago
  @dkersten What happens in the scenario where you have other Python distributions on your system? Does Anaconda keep things nicely compartmentalized like a virtualenv?
  - msellout 13y ago
    Yes
  - dkersten 13y ago
    Yes, Anaconda is completely self-contained (you can actually install it anywhere you like, for example, your home directory) and does not interfere with the rest of your system at all. You can also run virtualenv from Anaconda too, if you want to have isolated Anaconda environments without installing it multiple times (which you could also do, if you wanted..) I like using it to make sure I have a very easy to install consistent environment between the various computers I use (including EC2 instances).

dkersten 13y ago

Re: setting up environment, I love Anaconda for that reason. Wget the installer, run it, all done - you have a fully featured Python environment ready to go, including Numpy, Scipy, Scikit-learn and much more. Running IPython and the IPython Notebook is then trivial. If you need anything else, you can use their own Conda package manager, or you can just use pip as usual.

julienchastang 13y ago
@dkersten What happens in the scenario where you have other Python distributions on your system? Does Anaconda keep things nicely compartmentalized like a virtualenv?
- msellout 13y ago
  Yes
- dkersten 13y ago
  Yes, Anaconda is completely self-contained (you can actually install it anywhere you like, for example, your home directory) and does not interfere with the rest of your system at all. You can also run virtualenv from Anaconda too, if you want to have isolated Anaconda environments without installing it multiple times (which you could also do, if you wanted..) I like using it to make sure I have a very easy to install consistent environment between the various computers I use (including EC2 instances).