Introduction

This is a special chapter about good practices in interactive computing. If the rest of the book is about the content, then this chapter is about the form. It describes how to work efficiently and properly with the tools this book is about. We will cover the essentials of the version control system Git before tackling reproducible computing experiments (notably with the IPython notebook).

We will also cover more general topics in software development, such as code quality, debugging, and testing. Attention to these subjects can greatly improve the quality of our end products (for example, software, research, and publications). We will only scratch the surface here, but you will find many references to learn more about these important topics.