Creating Jupyter Notebooks
Jupyter Notebooks (JN) are an option for contribution to the IFCC that are more engaging for users as they allow users to run Python code in a browser. This allows readers to follow along with code and see the results in real time.
Here are some options to allow you to interactively develop a JN so you can execution of the code and see the outputs that the code generates. For more detailed information about how to develop a JN in each of these software see links included below.
Google Colaboratory (Colab) is a free Google service where you can create, run and share Jupyter notebooks, you only need a browser. The service is fast, has lots of documentation and examples, and integrates with Google Drive where you can store your notebook (.ipynb) files. For an introduction to Google Colab see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inN8seMm7UI.
Integrated Development Environment (IDE) software are the mainstay of professional coders across many different coding languages. The reason is they have features that help developers write code (i.e. auto-completion), detect language errors, conform to standards, and run code live to detect execution errors. In addition, they typically integrate with other tools/services (e.g. GitHub, git) and technologies (e.g. FTP, SSH) and manage installation of software packages. This makes writing code much more efficient, agile, and high quality. The following IDE's are the commonly used for coding Python.
PyCharm is JetBrains IDE for coding in Python, however because it was developed alongside a number of other IDEs for other languages, it is rich in features, very stable, and actively supported and really good. The only downside is that it is a commercial product and therefore only free for those in education (both teachers and students). PyCharm can be found at https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/ and extensive documentation can be found here.
Visual Studio Code (VS Code) (not to be confused with Visual Studio) is a free coding IDE from Microsoft that runs on any platform (https://code.visualstudio.com/) and supports multiple programming languages including Python through added extensions. Documentation can be found at https://code.visualstudio.com/docs, and there is a good introduction to using Python in VS Code at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9U-EBG8jVk.
