PyData 2013 keynote (IPython & friends)

A similar talk to others I've given recently, this was my keynote at the Silicon Valley edition of PyData 2013.

Full video: http://vimeo.com/63250251

Transcript

1. IPython Open Source Academia Wrapup IPython A modern vision of interactive computing Fernando Pérez http://fperez.org, @fperez_org Fernando.Perez@berkeley.edu Henry H. Wheeler Jr. Brain Imaging Center, UC Berkeley PyData 2013, Silicon Valley March 20, 2013
2. IPython Open Source Academia Wrapup Outline 1 IPython: Interactive Python 2 The Life of an Open Source Project 3 Academia vs Open Source 4 Wrapup FP (UC Berkeley) IPython 3/20/13 2 / 34
3. In the beginning, IBM said... Let there be FORTRAN
4. In the beginning, IBM said... Let there be FORTRAN
5. Beyond (Floating Point) Number Crunching Hardware floating point Arbitrary precision integers Rationals Interval arithmetic Symbolic manipulation FORTRAN Extended precision floating point Text processing Databases Graphical user interfaces Web interfaces Hardware control Multi-language integration Data formats: HDF5, XML, ...
6. The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers. Richard Hamming, 1962
7. IPython Open Source Academia Wrapup The computer as microscope Exploratory: Problem’s definition evolves as we understand it. No ‘requirements’ to build an application against. Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, IDL, etc. All have an interactive environment. Applications Languages FP (UC Berkeley) IPython 3/20/13 6 / 34
8. IPython: part of a Rich Ecosystem IPython NetworkX
9. IPython Open Source Academia Wrapup The Lifecycle of a Scientific Idea (schematically) 1 Individual exploratory work 2 Collaborative development 3 Parallel production runs (HPC, cloud, ...) 4 Publication (with reproducible results!) 5 Education 6 Goto 1. The Problem with most tools Barriers and discontinuities in workflow in between all the steps FP (UC Berkeley) IPython 3/20/13 8 / 34
10. IPython Open Source Academia Wrapup The Lifecycle of a Scientific Idea (schematically) 1 Individual exploratory work 2 Collaborative development 3 Parallel production runs (HPC, cloud, ...) 4 Publication (with reproducible results!) 5 Education 6 Goto 1. The Problem with most tools Barriers and discontinuities in workflow in between all the steps FP (UC Berkeley) IPython 3/20/13 8 / 34
11. IPython’s goal: Fluid transitions in all these steps
12. Demo
13. IPython Open Source Academia Wrapup Pillar #1: An architecture for interactive computing FP (UC Berkeley) IPython 3/20/13 11 / 34
14. IPython Open Source Academia Wrapup Pillar #2: the Notebook Format JSON but version control-friendly Easy for machine processing, fixable by hand if need be. Lots of hooks for metadata Not Python-specific (Ruby, JS notebooks exist, R, Julia planned) Produce Markdown, reST, L A TEX, HTML, etc... An open format for sharing, publishing and archiving executable computational work FP (UC Berkeley) IPython 3/20/13 12 / 34
15. IPython Open Source Academia Wrapup Outline 1 IPython: Interactive Python 2 The Life of an Open Source Project 3 Academia vs Open Source 4 Wrapup FP (UC Berkeley) IPython 3/20/13 13 / 34
16. Documented protocols and formats: a growing ecosystem around IPython
17. An Emacs Notebook Client! Takafumi Arakaki http://tkf.github.com/emacs-ipython-notebook
18. Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 integrated console Dino Viehland and Shahrokh Mortazavi (Microsoft) http://pytools.codeplex.com
19. A vim client to control an IPython kernel/console Paul Ivanov (Berkeley) https://github.com/ivanov/vim-ipython
20. Notebooks on Windows Azure Cloud Shahrokh Mortazavi (Microsoft), B.G., F.P. http://bit.ly/JQeojD
21. Star Cluster: IPython parallel+Notebook on Amazon EC2 Justin Riley (MIT) http://web.mit.edu/star/cluster
22. NBViewer: easy notebook sharing Matthias Bussonnier http://nbviewer.ipython.org
23. Other projects using IPython Scientific EPD: Enthought Python Distribution. Anaconda: Continuum Python Distribution. Sage: open source mathematics. PyRAF: Space Telescope Science Institute CASA: Nat. Radio Astronomy Observatory Ganga: CERN PyMAD: neutron spectrom., Laue Langevin Sardana: European Synchrotron Radiation ASCEND: eng. modeling (Carnegie Mellon). JModelica: dynamical systems. DASH: Denver Aerosol Sources and Health. Trilinos: Sandia National Lab. DoD: baseline configuration. NiPype: computational pipelines, MIT. PyIMSL Studio, by Visual Numerics. ... Web/Other Visual Studio 2010: MS. Django. Turbo Gears. Pylons web framework Zope and Plone CMS. Axon Shell, BBC Kamaelia. Schevo database. Pitz: distributed task/bug tracking. iVR (interactive Virtual Reality). Movable Python (portable Python environment). ...
24. How did we get here? A brief history of IPython October 2001: “just a little afternoon hack” My own $PYTHONSTARTUP: ipython-0.0.1.py: 259 lines. In [N]: prompts and _N results cache. IPP (Interactive Python Prompt) by Janko Hauser (Oceanography) LazyPython by Nathan Gray (CS Caltech) 2002: Ignore John Hunter’s Gnuplot support patches ... let there be matplotlib (actually finish my PhD!) 2005: Brian Granger, Min Ragan-Kelley First parallel tools, Twisted-based 2005-2008: Ville Vainio, Gaël Varoquaux, Laurent Dufréchou Core maintenance, Wx integration.
25. Summer 2009: NIH-funded cleanup by Brian. March 2010: prototype networked shell using ØMQ 2-day sprint with Brian Enthought funds Qt console. Min ports parallel code to ØMQ Core architecture ready, foundation for Notebook Fall 2010 James Gao at Berkeley builds (5th!) Notebook Prototype. Summer 2011 Brian rebuids James’ prototype into today’s Notebook.
26. An important plot http://www.ohloh.net/p/ipython
27. (Incomplete) Cast of Characters Brian Granger - Physics, Cal State San Luis Obispo Min Ragan-Kelley - Nuclear Engineering, UC Berkeley Matthias Bussonnier - Physics, Institut Curie, Paris Brad Froehle - Mathematics, UC Berkeley Paul Ivanov - Neuroscience, UC Berkeley. Robert Kern - Enthought Thomas Kluyver - Biology, U. Sheffield Jonathan March- Enthought Evan Patterson - Physics, Caltech/Enthought Jörgen Stenarson - Elect. Engineering, Sweden. Stefan van der Walt - UC Berkeley John Hunter - TradeLink Securities, Chicago. Prabhu Ramachandran - Aerospace Engineering, IIT Bombay. Satra Ghosh- MIT Neuroscience Gaël Varoquaux - Neurospin (Orsay, France) Ville Vainio - CS, Tampere University of Technology, Finland Barry Wark - Neuroscience, U. Washington. Ondrej Certik - Physics, U Nevada Reno Darren Dale - Cornell Justin Riley - MIT Mark Voorhies - UC San Francisco Nicholas Rougier - INRIA Nancy Grand Est Thomas Spura - Fedora project Many more! (~220 commit authors)
28. IPython Open Source Academia Wrapup Outline 1 IPython: Interactive Python 2 The Life of an Open Source Project 3 Academia vs Open Source 4 Wrapup FP (UC Berkeley) IPython 3/20/13 26 / 34
29. Support at the edges of academic funding Enthought, Austin, TX: Lots! Microsoft: WinHPC support, Visual Studio integration, Azure (thanks to Shahrokh Mortazavi). DoD/DRC Inc: funding through Sept. 2012 (thanks to Jose Unpingco and Chris Keees). NIH: via NiPy grant NSF: via Sage compmath grant Google: summer of code 2005, 2010. Tech-X Corp., Boulder, CO: Parallel/notebook (previous versions) Recent stable funding (2 years, 7 people, J. Taylor):
30. Open Source: skills, tools and practices we need! A culture where things get done. Wildly collaborative Reproducible by necessity Version control, testing, documentation, public peer review, etc.
31. Reward Structure in academia: we punish all of the above Departmental boundaries: interdisciplinary work is a great buzzword, not such a great career path. Computational heritage is built on code not on citations Continuous evolution vs publication milestones Authorship in collaborative works vs the first-author paper. Scholarship and intellectual effort embedded in the code.
32. NumFOCUS: Open Code, Better Science Promote the health of our open source scientific computing ecosystem Support the development of multiple projects. Community-created and driven. A neutral ground for industry, academia and government to support scientific open source. 501(c)3 - donations are tax-exempt in the USA http://numfocus.org
33. IPython Open Source Academia Wrapup Outline 1 IPython: Interactive Python 2 The Life of an Open Source Project 3 Academia vs Open Source 4 Wrapup FP (UC Berkeley) IPython 3/20/13 31 / 34
34. The future of IPython: a 2-year roadmap Spring/summer 2013: IPython 1.0 Notebook document management (nbconvert) JavaScript internals cleanup Fall 2013 Interactive JavaScript API With callbacks to remote kernels. 2014 Multiuser server Simple to deploy Trusted (shell OK) Unix users in a lab, group, class, etc. https://github.com/ipython/ipython/wiki/Roadmap:-IPython
35. In closing: our vision of scientific computing Build on the right abstractions The kernel: unify interactive and parallel computing → you only have one brain! A single protocol: many kernels, many clients. Communications and logging the protocol is the notebook file format. Insight and communication (Hamming) “Literate computing” vs “literate programming”. Build a community and an ecosystem “How to Scale a Code in the Human Dimension”, M. Turk, http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.7064.
36. In closing: our vision of scientific computing Build on the right abstractions The kernel: unify interactive and parallel computing → you only have one brain! A single protocol: many kernels, many clients. Communications and logging the protocol is the notebook file format. Insight and communication (Hamming) “Literate computing” vs “literate programming”. Build a community and an ecosystem “How to Scale a Code in the Human Dimension”, M. Turk, http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.7064.
37. In closing: our vision of scientific computing Build on the right abstractions The kernel: unify interactive and parallel computing → you only have one brain! A single protocol: many kernels, many clients. Communications and logging the protocol is the notebook file format. Insight and communication (Hamming) “Literate computing” vs “literate programming”. Build a community and an ecosystem “How to Scale a Code in the Human Dimension”, M. Turk, http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.7064.
38. John D. Hunter, 1968-2012: http://matplotlib.org Memorial fund: http://numfocus.org/johnhunter