Python

Installing

Anaconda or another IDE
Anaconda includes the conda tool
- package manager
- also able to manage environments (like virtualenv)
pip package manager (comes with conda): pip

Setup (with conda)

conda update conda # Will update conda to the latest version

Create new environment with a specific version of python, including some packages/libraries:

conda create --name <envname> python=3 <packages list>

source activate <envname>

(work within the environment)

source deactivate

Potentially outdated info: Apparently, Apple now uses a compiler that treats unknown arguments as hard errors and this can break pip installs. A temporary workaround is to use the following command every time pip is used (source):

sudo ARCHFLAGS=-Wno-error=unused-command-line-argument-hard-error-in-future pip install xxxxx

Also likely to affect Homebrew et al.

Useful libraries

pandas: sophisticated data analysis library
agate: easy to use/read data analysis library, e.g. for data journalism
guess_language: guess the natural language of a text. Works better for longer texts and for actual sentences, performs very poorly on book titles (I tried).

IDEs

Wing
IPython + web thingy

References

SW Carpentry class

Resources

Real Python
Discover Flask (Real Python)
binder turn iPython notebooks hosted on GitHub into interactive notebooks.
Things to watch for if using serialization formats (e.g. XML, JSON) in web apps.

Django

= framework for building web applications in Python.

Alternatives

Flask for small projects.

Deployment

Possibilities:

OpenShift (free option) - apparently possible to use with custom domain names too.
WebFaction (recommended by Greg)
PythonAnywhere
Heroku

Info on deploying in the Django book. Using FastCGI

References

Tutorial
Django book (dated)