Questions about setting up a local development environment

[ehmatthes]

The readme is pretty sparse right now, so if you are trying to get involved and have any questions about setup, please feel free to ask them here.

[akkartik]

I just followed the steps and ran the notebook. The index page looks good, but is this how it's supposed to look when I click on hello_world?

[ehmatthes]

Here's what I see:

I think you are using an older version of IPython Notebook than I am. I started the project using the standard Ubuntu 12.04 versions of ipython and ipython-notebook. That worked for the code that runs the same under 2.7 and 3.3. When I did the section on floats, I needed to run 3.3 in IPython Notebook.

At that point I installed ipython3, and ipython3-notebook. For most development on this project now, I run ipython3 notebook, and only run 2.7 when I am writing up specific examples about 2.7.

I have updated the readme to show how I installed ipython3-notebook on Ubuntu 12.04. I think if you install ipython3-notebook, or the appropriate version of that for your system, you will see what I see.

When I updated my versions of ipython-notebook and ipython3-notebook and then opened the notebooks for the first time, I got a message that the notebooks would no longer be compatible with older versions of ipython notebook.

Hope that helps, and please let me know how it turns out.

[akkartik]

Noooo, not python 3 again.. :(

[ehmatthes]

Noooo, not python 3 again.. :(

Ha ha! I'm not sure if you're saying that from a teacher, student, or developer perspective, but I'd be curious to hear.

Student perspective

I focused on Python 3 because I am building these notebooks for teaching people brand new to programming. The thinking is, people who are just starting to program are going to spend more time in Python 3 than Python 2. They don't have any legacy projects they need to maintain, and they don't have any packages they are trying to use that depend on Python 2. Anyone who can code in Python 3 is going to learn Python 2 syntax quickly and easily if they take on a project that requires Python 2.

So, with students I have them learn Python 3 until they find themselves needing Python 2. I am finding it's good to bring myself up to speed with Python 3 as well.

Contributing to this project

I think someone could contribute to this project without ever touching Python 3, because most of the code is compatible with Python 2. The project code might be different, but at that point it might be good to make separate dedicated notebooks for each project in Python 2 and Python 3.

If anyone is staying away from this project just because of Python 3 issues, please let me know and we'll see if there's a straightforward way to address your concerns.

Thanks!

[ehmatthes]

@akkartik, I think I just have a newer version of ipython notebook than you. I don't really think what you are seeing is a python 2/ python 3 issue.

[akkartik]

I think the problem might be that your instructions are in terms of apt-get, but my distro doesn't support the versions you indicate. It would suck to have to upgrade the OS just to install a tool to learn programming. Perhaps you could show how to install the right ipython-notebook in a virtualenv?

(I'm trying to figure this out as well. I've been stumped a few times by versioning issues, but hopefully I'll sort it out this time.)

[ehmatthes]

Thanks, I'll take a look at this shortly. What system/ distro are you on?

[akkartik]

I'm on ubuntu (12.04 precise). Pretty vanilla otherwise.

[ehmatthes]

All right, I just installed a fresh version of 12.04 in virtualbox, so I could test out the directions on a fresh install. These notebooks just require a later version of ipython and ipython notebook than the standard 12.04 packages. This should get you up and running:

$ sudo apt-get install ipython=0.13.2-1~ubuntu12.04.1
$ sudo apt-get install ipython-notebook=0.13.2-1~ubuntu12.04.1
$ git clone https://github.com/ehmatthes/intro_programming
$ cd intro_programming/notebooks
$ ipython notebook

You should not have to uninstall the current versions of ipython and ipython-notebook; this will update your versions of both packages. Can you let me know if that works? You shouldn't have to do anything with Python 3, except for one or two sections in the whole project.

[akkartik]

It worked!! Many thanks, Eric, and sorry for being grouchy. I look forward
to playing more with this.

[ehmatthes]

No matter, I've been meaning to get virtualbox set up for a while now. I'm happy to answer more questions, so please don't hesitate to ask.

[akkartik]

I had no idea you could install later versions than the default with apt-get (no tinkering with ppas, etc.) Thanks for the insight.

Oh well, I guess I'll punt on installing the right versions inside a virtualenv. One of these days I'll figure out how to do that.

[ehmatthes]

I got ipython notebook running in a virtualenv using Python 2.7:

$ git clone https://github.com/ehmatthes/intro_programming
$ cd intro_programming
$ virtualenv --distribute venv
$ source venv/bin/activate
$ pip install ipython[all]
$ cd notebooks
$ ipython notebook

This worked for me, and it was really interesting. This installs version 1.1.0 of ipython, which includes ipython-notebook. This is a newer version than what I have in the readme, and I like it better than the 0.13 release.

I did not get Python 3.3 running in the virtualenv.

I will look at updating the readme to use the 1.1.0 release of ipython. Thanks again for pushing this issue.