Introduction
In this chapter, we will see many features of the notebook, including the interactive widgets that have been brought by IPython 2.0. As we have only seen basic features in the previous chapters, we will dive deeper into the architecture of the notebook here.
What is the notebook?
The notebook was released in 2011, ten years after the creation of IPython. Its development has a long and complex history that is nicely summarized by Fernando Perez on his blog, http://blog.fperez.org/2012/01/ipython-notebook-historical.html. Inspired by mathematical software such as Maple, Mathematica, or Sage, the notebook really fostered the popularity of IPython.
By mixing together code, text, images, plots, hypertext links, and mathematical equations in a single document, the notebook brings reproducibility to interactive computing. The notebook, when used correctly, can radically change workflows in scientific computing. Prior to the notebook, one had to juggle between a text editor and an interactive...
