Chapter 1, Using IPython for HPC, discusses the distinctive features of parallel and HPC computing and how IPython fits in (and how it does not).

Chapter 2, Advanced Shell Topics, introduces the basics of working with the command line including debugging, shell commands, and embedding, and describes the architecture that underlies it.

Chapter 3, Stepping Up to IPython for Parallel Computing, explores the features of IPython that relate directly to parallel computing. Different parallel architectures will be introduced and IPython's support for them will be described.

Chapter 4, Messaging with ZeroMQ and MPI, covers these messaging systems and how they can be used with IPython and parallel architectures.

Chapter 5, Opening the Toolkit – The IPython API, introduces some of the more useful libraries included with IPython, including performance profiling, AsyncResult, and View.

Chapter 6, Works Well with Others – IPython and Third-Party Tools, describes tools created by third-parties, including R, Octave, and Hy. The appropriate magics are introduced, passing data between the languages is demonstrated, and sample programs are examined.

Chapter 7, Seeing Is Believing – Visualization, provides an overview of various tools that can be used to produce visual representations of data and results. Matplotlib, bokeh, R, and Python-nvd3 are covered.

Chapter 8, But It Worked in the Demo! – Testing, covers issues related to unit testing programs and the tools IPython provides to support this process. Frameworks discussed include unittest, pytest, and nose2.

Chapter 9, Documentation, discusses the different audience for documentation and their requirements. The use of docstrings with reStructuredText, docutils, and Sphinx is demonstrated in the context of good documentation standards.

Chapter 10, Visiting Jupyter, introduces the Jupyter notebook and describes its use as a laboratory notebook combining data and calculations.

Chapter 11, Into the Future, reflects on the current rapid rate of change and speculates on what the future may hold, both in terms of the recent split between IPython and the Jupyter project and relative to some emerging trends in scientific computing in general.

This book was written using the IPython 4.0 and 4.0.1 (stable) releases from August 2015 through March 2016; all examples and functions should work in these versions. When third-party libraries are required, the version used will be noted at that time. Given the rate of change of the IPython 4 implementation, the various third-party libraries, and the field in general, it is an unfortunate fact that getting every example in this book to run on every reader's machine is doubtful. Add to that the differences in machine architecture and configuration and the problem only worsens. Despite efforts to write straightforward, portable code, the reader should not be surprised if some work is required to make the odd example work on their system.

This book is for IPython developers who want to make the most of IPython and perform advanced scientific computing with IPython, utilizing the ease of interactive computing.

It is ideal for users who wish to learn about the interactive and parallel computing properties of IPython 4.0, along with its integration with third-party tools and concepts such as testing and documenting results.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "These methods must be named setUpClass and tearDownClass and must be implemented as class methods."

A block of code is set as follows:

    def setUp(self):
        print("Doing setUp")
        self.vals = np.zeros((10), dtype=np.int32)
        self.randGen = myrand.MyRand( )

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

pip install pytest

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "At a finer level of detail are the bugs listed under the Issues tag and the new features under the Pulls tag."

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To send us general feedback, simply e-mail <[email protected]>, and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.

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