Here are some of the keyboard shortcuts and text snippets I’ve shared with others during Pair Programming sessions that have been well received. They’ve saved me countless hours programming and my hope is you’ll be able to start using some of these techniques to become a more efficient Python programmer.

Keyboard shortcuts

Taking a few minutes to learn certain Jupyter Notebook keyboard shortcuts has helped me be a more efficient Python developer. Below are the keyboard shortcuts I’ve found most useful.

NOTE these keyboard shortcuts are for Jupyter version 4.1.0 and Mac OSX. For most shortcuts below, you can replace cmd for ctrl for Windows or Linux. Or, you can use the H keyboard shortcut in Windows or Linux to confirm the appropriate keyboard shortcuts for those operating systems.

Practice Jupyter Notebook

I created this Jupyter Notebook on my Github repo that you can download and use to practice these keyboard shortcuts.

Command mode vs. Edit mode

But first…something key to be aware of: Jupyter Notebooks have two different keyboard input modes:

1. Command mode - binds the keyboard to notebook level actions. Indicated by a grey cell border with a blue left margin.
2. Edit mode - when you’re typing in a cell. Indicated by a green cell border

Command Mode

• shift + enter run cell, select below
• ctrl + enter run cell
• option + enter run cell, insert below
• A insert cell above
• B insert cell below
• C copy cell
• V paste cell
• D , D delete selected cell
• shift + M merge selected cells, or current cell with cell below if only one cell selected
• I , I interrupt kernel
• 0 , 0 restart kernel (with dialog)
• Y change cell to code mode
• M change cell to markdown mode (good for documentation)

Edit Mode

• cmd + click for multi-cursor editing
• option + scrolling click for column editing
• cmd + / toggle comment lines
• tab code completion or indent
• shift + tab tooltip
• ctrl + shift + - split cell

Command Palette

cmd + shift + p

Want quick access to all the commands in Jupyter Notebooks? Open the command palette with cmd + shift + p and you’ll quickly be able to search all the commands!

View all keyboard shortcuts

H (in Command mode)

Forget what that keyboard shortcut is? Type H in Command mode for a list of all available keyboard shortcuts.

Text snippets

Text snippets allow me to save time typing and keep things consistent.

For my text snippets, I use Textexpander which is Mac OSX only. However, for Windows I’ve used PhraseExpress in the past which works well too.

Quick imports for all your favorite packages

Constantly importing the same packages and/or forget what that package you always use is named? I like to store my default imports in a snippet such as the following. I’d recommend you create a similar snippet and tune it to your preferences.

;imp becomes:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
from __future__ import division

import numpy as np

import pandas as pd

from pandas import Series, DataFrame

from numpy.random import randn

from scipy import stats

import matplotlib as mpl
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns
sns.set_style('whitegrid')

%matplotlib inline

import math

from sklearn.linear_model import LogisticRegression
from sklearn.linear_model import LinearRegression
from sklearn.cross_validation import train_test_split

from sklearn import metrics

import statsmodels.api as sm

from pprint import pprint

Making writing functions and documentation less painful

I like to remind myself to write a function DocString every time I write a function by using the following snippet.

;def becomes:

1
2
3
4
def ():
    '''

    '''