IPython provides a rich architecture for interactive computing with:

• Powerful interactive shells (terminal and Qt-based).
• A browser-based notebook with support for code, text, mathematical expressions, inline plots and other rich media.
• Support for interactive data visualization and use of GUI toolkits.
• Flexible, embeddable interpreters to load into your own projects.
• Easy to use, high performance tools for parallel computing.

While the focus of the project is Python, our architecture is designed in a language-agnostic way to facilitate interactive computing in any language. An interactive kernel speaks to clients such as the terminal or web notebook via a well-specified protocol, and all features of a kernel are available to all clients. We ship the official IPython kernel, but kernels for other languages are being currently developed, with prototypes in Ruby and JavaScript already existing. Additionally, the IPython kernel supports multi-language integration, letting you for example mix Python code with Cython, R, Octave, and scripting in Bash, Perl or Ruby.

To get started with the IPython Notebook, see our official example collection. Our notebook gallery is an excellent way to see the many things you can do with IPython while learning about a variety of topics, from basic programming to advanced statistics or quantum mechanics.

To learn more about IPython, you can watch our videos and screencasts, download our talks and presentations, or read our extensive documentation. IPython is open source (BSD license), and is used by a range of other projects; add your project to that list if it uses IPython as a library, and please don’t forget to cite the project.

IPython supports Python 2.6 to 2.7 and 3.2 or newer. Our older 0.10 series supports Python 2.5, and can be used with Python 2.4.

Announcements

• Book: Cyrille Rossant has published the first IPython-focused book: Learning IPython for Interactive Computing and Data Visualization, for which Matthias Bussonnier was a technical reviewer. We thank Packt Publishing for donating a portion of the proceeds from this book to support IPython’s development.
• FSF Award: Fernando Perez was awarded the 2012 Award for the Advancement of Free Software for the creation of IPython and his work in the Scientific Python community. More details.
• IPython tutorial at PyCon 2013: Fernando Perez, Brian Granger and Min Ragan-Kelley presented in-depth tutorial about IPython. It covers IPython’s architecture and hands-on examples on customization, embedding, effective uses of the various applications, the architecture of the web notebook and how to use IPython for parallel and distributed computing.
• Roadmap to 1.0 and beyond: IPython 1.0 is coming mid-July 2013. See the grant which is funding the bulk of the work, as well as our roadmap for achieving the grant’s objectives. Read on for more details.
• Sloan Foundation grant: IPython has been awarded a $1.15 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. This will support several core developers, allowing them to focus on building the IPython Notebook into a tool for open, collaborative, reproducible scientific computing. We’ll also be bringing developers together for two sprints each year in California. See more details.

More news...

John Hunter (1968-2012)

On August 28 2012 at 10am, John D. Hunter, creator of matplotlib and IPython contributor, died from complications arising from cancer treatment, after a brief but intense battle with this terrible illness. John is survived by his wife Miriam, his three daughters Rahel, Ava and Clara, his sisters Layne and Mary, and his mother Sarah. If you have benefited from John's many contributions, please say thanks in the way that would matter most to him: by making a donation to the John Hunter Memorial Fund.

Citing IPython

Several of the authors of IPython are connected with academic and scientific research, so it is important for us to be able to show the impact of our work in other projects and fields.

If IPython contributes to a project that leads to a scientific publication, please acknowledge this fact by citing the project. You can use this ready-made citation entry.

Support

We gratefully acknowledge the support we’ve received over the years from the following sources:

• In December 2012, IPython was awarded a $1.15 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation that will fund the core team for the 2012-2013 period.
• Since 2011, we have had support from the US DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP), which funds several IPython developers in collaboration with the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) that provides computing resources and support from the staff.
• Enthought Inc has supported IPython since its beginning in multiple forms, including –but not limited to– the funding of our Qt console, hosting our website for many years, the continued hosting of our mailing lists, and the inclusion of IPython in the Enthought Python Distribution.
• NiPy/NIH: funding via the NiPy project (NIH grant 5R01MH081909-02) supported our 2009 refactoring work.
• Sage/NSF: funding via the grant Sage: Unifying Mathematical Software for Scientists, Engineers, and Mathematicians (NSF grant DMS-1015114) supported our Seattle 2011 developer meeting.
• Microsoft’s team working on Python Tools for Visual Studio developed the integraton of IPython into the Python plugin for Visual Studio 2010.
• Tech-X Corporation supported in 2008 the development of our parallel computing tools.
• Google Summer of Code: in 2005 and 2010 we’ve had GSoC support for prototypes in several areas of the project.
• The Ohio Supercomputer Center and the Department of Defense High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP), for sponsoring work in 2009 on our parallel computing tools.
• Bivio Software hosted an IPython sprint in 2006, in addition to their support of the Front Range Pythoneers group in Boulder, CO.
• GitHub hosts our development workflow and documentation.
• ShiningPanda gives us a free continuous integration service.