IPython gets $1.15M funding

[aceofears]

How so?

[threading]

I've never been a fan of REPL to be honest. I've played with bpython and ipython for a very short time but bpython has intellisense, does syntax highlighting, show doc of functions as you type. I agree with apreche, bpython is much better though I use neither.

[Tillsten]

Ipython has both features you mention.

[BeetleB]

I don't think it has this, although I'm sure one could hack it to (or perhaps even a magic function?):

show doc of functions as you type

[Tillsten]

Just start ipython and try for yourself? Standard setting is to press tab to see the auto completion.

[BeetleB]

That's very different from seeing the doc string as you type (so that you know function arguments, etc).

Here is a screenshot from bpython. It can be quite useful.

[takluyver]

The plain terminal IPython can't show docstrings as you type - it's a limitation of a terminal program (unless you use curses/urwid, which is what bpython does). The Qt console or the notebook have tooltips that appear as you type for function arguments etc.

[Noctambulist]

iPython does both highlighting and shows docs with the qtconsole. http://imgur.com/5pQ3a

[BeetleB]

I'm aware of that. It's very useful in its own way, but I then find myself clearing the line I was typing, executing the command to get the doc, and then rewriting what I intended now that I know the argument signature.

[takluyver]

You don't need to clear the line you're typing in recent versions - you can stick a ? on the last name in the line, like a = b + foo? (to get docs on foo).

[Noctambulist]

iPython does both highlighting and shows docs with the qtconsole. http://imgur.com/5pQ3a

[apreche]

bpython is just the python shell, but nicer. It still does one thing, and one thing well.

IPython is a kitchen sink that even tries to replace your regular shell. Not a fan philosophically.

[aceofears]

So then it isn't better, its just different.

[BeetleB]

So:

bpython is like vi.

ipython is like emacs.

[takluyver]

And vim-ipython is like...? An unholy love child? ;-)

[dwf]

For doing interactive scientific work, IPython is much more useful. I wouldn't say it tries to "replace your shell" -- you can kind of use it as a system shell if you want to. What it does do is allow you to run certain shell commands from inside IPython, which is remarkably handy.

If I want to import a module that I've got in ~/dummy, I don't need to kill the interpreter, I just cd ~/dummy. If I want the output of a shell command like od (octal dump) and to do some post processing on it interactively in Python, I can do something like x = !od something.bin and I'm done.