Python Notebooks are a nice platform for working with Python and especially for exploratory, chunk-by-chunk programming. As someone who teaches programming, I like how I can blend explanatory text cells with executable code cells in a single notebook interface. Google's Colaboratory is a Drive-based implementation based on Jupyter Notebooks.

Pros

• nothing to install, download, and keep track of
• easy to share and copy notebooks
• environment is well-stocked
• GPUs

Cons

• projects are less portable than with an IDE
• assumes some layers of abstraction
• environment can be awkward when you need to install modules

To Get Started

Log in to a Google Drive account, and go to http://colab.research.google.com/

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