Integrated development environment

Personally, I use my preferred editor emacs and the improved interactive environment ipython for the design and test of the scripts; the actual tutorial assumes this working style. You can of course use any text editor you like. You might consider also one of the following alternatives to (editor and ipython shell):

• spyder (similar to the Matlab-environment)
• ipython notebook (Notebook similar in style to Mathematica)
• eric (similar to the Eclipse-environment)
• PyCharm (another python IDE)

The latter two are not specially focussed on scientific computing.

Warning

Please be aware that the only supported setup on the exam computers consists of an editor (probably gedit) and the ipython interpreter running in a shell. Hence you should be familiar with that too. Other tools might or might not be installed and their use is at your own risk.