Hi Roy,

iPython is huge at UC Berkeley and it's creator, Fernando Perez is
part of the team that will be launching the Berkeley Institute for
Data Science, which incidentally will be based in Doe Library when it
opens in a few months. Here's a blog post about the project:
http://blog.fperez.org/2013/11/an-ambitious-experiment-in-data-science.html

Also of interest, my colleague Raymond Yee uses iPython when he
teaches his Open Data class in the UC Berkeley School of Information.
The class actually publishes their final projects in iPython Notebook
format. You can seem their work here:
http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/fperez/blog/blob/master/130507-Berkeley-iSchool-OpenData.ipynb

I'm sure there are other cool examples of how it's being used in
teaching and science. Seems to me like something that's going to be
around for awhile, but admittedly, my perspective is from iPython
ground zero!

-Harrison




On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 9:48 AM, Roy Tennant <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Our Wikipedian in Residence, Max Klein brought iPython [1] to my attention
> recently and even in just the little exploration I've done with it so far
> I'm quite impressed. Although you could call it "interactive Python" that
> doesn't begin to put across the full range of capabilities, as when I first
> heard that I thought "Great, a Python shell where you enter a command, hit
> the return, and it executes. Great. Just what I need. NOT." But I was SO
> WRONG.
>
> It certainly can and does do that, but also so much more. You can enter
> blocks of code that then execute. Those blocks don't even have to be
> Python. They can be Ruby or Perl or bash. There are built-in functions of
> various kinds that it (oddly) calls "magic". But perhaps the killer bit is
> the idea of "Notebooks" that can capture all of your work in a way that is
> also editable and completely web-ready. This last part is probably
> difficult to understand until you experience it.
>
> Anyway, i was curious if others have been working with it and if so, what
> they are using it for. I can think of all kinds of things I might want to
> do with it, but hearing from others can inspire me further, I'm sure.
> Thanks,
> Roy
>
> [1] http://ipython.org/