Integrated Development Environment: Jupyter Notebook

SSI

What is a Jupyter Notebook?

An Integrated Development Environment, or IDE
Like the interpreter, but previous commands are interactive
Can edit previous commands, output is recalculated
Can mix code with discussion, commentary, and results (e.g. text output, graphs)

Why use Notebooks?

Support for many languages, e.g. Python, Java, R, Julia, Fortran
Many helpful features, e.g. autocompletion
Can save notebooks as a reproducible process to generate output
Exploratory data analyses and visualisation
Export formats, e.g. Python, PDF, LaTeX, …
Excellent for research, demonstration, teaching
A good compromise between interpreter and full IDE like PyCharm

How can you use Notebooks?

For creating and editing notebooks:

Interactive notebooks are hosted by a server and provided via a web browser
Temporary notebooks hosted via JupyterHub, e.g. jupyter.org
Install and use Jupyter locally

For viewing notebooks statically:

Using nbviewer at nbviewer.jupyter.org
GitHub renders notebooks stored in its repositories

The Jupyter Notebook Server

An Example Notebook