Page - 312 - in Programming for Computations – Python - A Gentle Introduction to Numerical Simulations with Python 3.6, Volume Second Edition

312 A InstallationandUseofPython • Matplotlib4 [7,8] forplotting • IPython5 [21,22] for interactivecomputing • SymPy6 [2] for symbolicmathematics • Spyder7 if you want to write and runyourprogramsas we (primarily)do in this book. In addition, allthough not used herein, the following packages might be of interest toyou(probablyat some later stage, ifyouareanewbie): • SciTools8 [13] foradd-ons toNumPy • ScientificPython9 [26] foradd-ons to NumPy • pytest10 ornose11 for testingprograms • pip12 for installingPythonpackages • Cython13 forcompilingPython to C • SciPy14 [9] foradvancedscientificcomputing Convertinga Python2ProgramtoPython3 Python comes in two versions, version 2 and 3, and these are not fully compatible. However, for the programs in this book, the differencesare very small, themajoronebeingprint,which inPython2 is a statement like print ’a:’, a, ’b:’, b while inPython3 it is a functioncall print( ’a:’, a, ’b:’, b) The code in this book is written in Python 3.6. However, you may come across code elsewhere that is written in Python 2, and you might prefer to have that code in Python3. The goodnews, is that portingcode from Python 2 to Python 3 is usually quite straight forward. One alternative, is to use the program2to3. Running2to3 prog.pywill transform a Python 2 program prog.py to its Python 3 counterpart. One can also use tools likefutureor six to easily write programs that run under both Python 2 and 3. Also, the futurizeprogramcanautomaticallydo this foryoubasedonv2.7code. 4 http://matplotlib.org. 5 http://ipython.org. 6 http://sympy.org. 7 https://github.com/spyder-ide/spyder. 8 https://github.com/hplgit/scitools. 9 http://starship.python.net/crew/hinsen. 10 http://pytest.org/latest/. 11 https://nose.readthedocs.org. 12 http://www.pip-installer.org. 13 http://cython.org. 14 http://scipy.org.