

Fernando Pérez of IPython fame wins the Free Software Foundation Award - jsbloom1
http://about.wise.io/2013/03/23/fernando-perez.html

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naftaliharris
I heard him speak at Stanford a few weeks ago. He made some great points about
academia having a lot to learn from the open-source community. In summary, he
said that academics should strive to make their research more open and
reproducible, and that version control tools like git and presentation tools
like IPython can help make that happen.

The talk was broadly similar to the slides I found here:
[http://www.stanford.edu/~vcs/AAAS2011/1102_aaas_reproducibil...](http://www.stanford.edu/~vcs/AAAS2011/1102_aaas_reproducibility_fperez.pdf)

If Fernando is able to convince academics to foster the same sort of culture
that the open-source community has, his influence would be very great indeed.

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takluyver
That's interesting - I've also noticed a big difference between 'release
early, release often' in the open source world, and the long slow process of
getting work reviewed and published in academia.

I've been wondering: could we run acadaemia without the stamp-of-approval that
is publishing in a peer reviewed journal? I.e. like releasing open source
software, when you've got something you're ready to share, you just publish it
yourself, without having to get anyone's permission. Of course, there are
other problems that would have to be overcome with that, but it could make
things a lot more efficient. There are some moves in that direction - look up
'arXiv overlay journals' if you're interested.

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_delirium
It's pretty common in many areas of science to release intermediate stuff
frequently. In CS, for example, the typical practice is to publish papers a
few times a year in conference proceedings, documenting current progress. You
can also publish on arXiv, or in technical reports, if you have additional
stuff that doesn't fit nicely in a conference. Journals don't really hold
anything up, since they've been relegated to more of an archival role. They're
rarely the _first_ place anything is published, just the place where it's tied
into a bow and deposited for posterity.

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takluyver
That's good to hear - my discipline, biology, isn't quite so forward thinking.

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tdicola
Nice, congratulations. IPython notebook really is a fantastic tool.

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jotaass
I'd just like to add my voice to the others to say I love IPython. It's
absolutely essential for my daily work, and it freed me from the shackles of
Matlab. Python is a lovely language on its own, but it really shines when you
add a good interactive prompt.

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curiouslearn
This is great news. Fernando, thanks for creating IPython. I use it a lot in
my work.

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phreeza
Glad to hear this, I use ipython on a daily basis, and chatted with him at
euroscipy a while back, he is a very nice guy! I think he comments on here
every now and then, too, so in case you read this: Thanks and congratulations!

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fperez_org
I think I've only commented a handful of times, I'm not really a regular. But
many thanks for the kind words, and to @profjsb for the generous writeup.

As I tried to say at the meeting, this really goes to the whole team. I may
have _started_ IPython, but it's the combined talent, energy and dedication of
a big team that makes it what it is today. This award is a recognition of all
that work, I'm just here to pick it up :)

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phreeza
Turns out I had seen your only comment before this thread, and unduly
extrapolated from that!

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smortaz
nice! congrats to fernando & brian & min for an awesome concept & execution.

