Technical topics

Hans Petter Langtangen [1, 2]

[1] Center for Biomedical Computing, Simula Research Laboratory
[2] Department of Informatics, University of Oslo

Mar 23, 2015

Table of contents

Accessing Python
      Required software
      Installing software on your laptop: Mac OS X and Windows
      Anaconda and Spyder
      VMWare Fusion virtual machine
      Dual boot on Windows
      Vagrant virtual machine
      How to write and run a Python program
      The SageMathCloud and Wakari web services
      Writing IPython notebooks
Different ways of running Python programs
      Executing Python programs in iPython
      Executing Python programs in Unix
      Executing Python programs in Windows
      Executing Python programs in Mac OS X
      Making a complete stand-alone executable
Doing operating system tasks in Python
Variable number of function arguments
      Variable number of positional arguments
      Variable number of keyword arguments
Evaluating program efficiency
      Making time measurements
      Profiling Python programs
References

Accessing Python

A comprehensive eco system for scientific computing with Python used to be quite a challenge to install on a computer, especially for newcomers. This problem is more or less solved today. There are several options for getting easy access to Python and the most important packages for scientific computations, so the biggest issue for a newcomer is to make a proper choice. An overview of the possibilities together with my own recommendations appears next.

This chapter is taken from book A Primer on Scientific Programming with Python by H. P. Langtangen, 4th edition, Springer, 2014.