In this chapter, we covered many of the basics of using IPython for development. IPython can be installed by hand, but there are also several all-in-one distributions available. These distributions automatically install many popular packages and provide advanced package management capability.

IPython offers functionality beyond a Python command line, however. In this chapter, we introduced configuration and magic commands. Configuration is accomplished by writing an IPython program to control various aspects of the environment through manipulating the configuration object.

Magic commands fall into many categories: OS equivalents, working with code, logging, debugging, documentation, profiling, and working with other languages, among others. Add to this the ability to create custom magic commands (in IPython or another language) and the IPython terminal becomes a much more powerful alternative to the standard Python terminal.

Also included is the debugger—ipdb. It is very similar to...