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/
