How can I start the python console within a program (for easy debugging)?

Question

After years of research programming in Matlab, I miss the way I could pause a program mid-execution and inspect the variables, do plotting, save/modify data, etc. via the intera

Answer 1

Check out the Python debugger. In short, you can insert

import pdb; pdb.set_trace()

at any point in your program that you want to debug. (Note that you should remove these in release versions!)