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Comment by joshvm | Hacker News Reader

Rather disappointed with IPython 2.0. They appear to have taken steps back in usability in the push to make notebooks wizzy and interactive.

I eventually downgraded to 1.2 because it was hampering my productivity. You'd be surprised how annoying removing the 'add cell above' button is, or not switching focus when a new cell is inserted. I don't care about showing my notebooks to the world. I want a convenient way to test out scripts, time functions and play with data visualisation.

Most annoying is the frankly poor change documentation and trying to figure out what's been deprecated or what happened to shortcuts. Many of the changes are subtle and you're simply expected to know where to look.

/Rant

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Just as a counter point, I was a huge fan of the changes in version two. "Wizzy and interactive" can be incredibly important for a wide range of applications. Half the reason interpreters are wonderful is that they drastically reduce the "idea to running" time, and having interactive widgets can do even more for that. (Not to mention things like animations and UIs, which are just useful sometimes.) Similarly, notebooks are a great way for me to publish content, and a very large portion of the things I write are written as IPython notebooks.

As an aside, everything in IPython 2 is available from the keyboard and all shortcuts can be viewed by pressing the Help menu or 'h'. 'Add cell above' is now just 'a' (and below is 'b') when in command-mode. I expect that learning to use the new modal interface can be a bit of a hassle, but for me it turned out to ultimately be really awesome.

I think it's mostly getting used to the fact there's an edit mode and a browse mode. To me it seems that if you create a cell, 99% of the time you want to jump into it and start typing code - not adding another cell or selecting whether it's in Markdown/Python/Raw format or whatever.

I suppose my biggest gripe is that I had to search for what changed (rather than simply what's new), given how much is different from a UI perspective it would have saved me a lot of time to skim a document.

It's probably awesome who want that kind of functionality, and it makes the IPython platform so much more powerful for content delivery, but I wish it had a simple "Code and execute" mode. I always wondered why people complained about extra keystrokes in applications and now I know why :P

I felt the same way when I first upgraded to 2.0 from 1.0, but I got used to it so fast that I don't remember why I cared. I think the only thing I still don't like is that kernel restart, and shutdown, are two clicks away instead of one.

Kernel restart is zero clicks if you use the shortcut: esc-0-0-return

esc to go to command mode zero-zero to bring up the kernel restart prompt return/enter to confirm

I definitely still get thrown by the command vs editing mode (mostly manifesting in new cells above or below the one I'm working on). But, I'm willing to accept the temporary handicap since everything has a shortcut now.

That's not to mention the other big convenience win of 2.0: directory navigation. You used to have to boot up a new server for each directory of notebooks you wanted to use. I have hundreds of notebooks...things were getting out of hand. Now you can run a single server, easily navigate your notebook directories from the browser, and write simple links between your notebooks.

I love this project.

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