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Show HN: Observable Notebooks

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Re: Show HN: Observable Notebooks

#21

Post by wizzard0 »

polalavik wrote: post #19

How is this different than Ipython/Jupyter notebooks? Whys everyone freaking out about this.

basically if you have a bunch of code blocks that depend on each others' results - you don't have to remember which ones to update if you changed one, it will update automatically.

especially useful with data visualization/exploration, but also helps a lot if you have a complex sequence where it's easy to get lost and forget to recompute something. there's a youtube link in the comments here which explains a lot.

Re: Show HN: Observable Notebooks

#22

Post by cpsempek »

This couldn't have come at a more convenient time for me. After years of telling myself I'd learn D3 I have finally started to as well as use it at work. I was using an extension in Jupyter but it was behaving unpredictably, and not being a frontend engineer by trade I found the process of sublime + browser foreign and cumbersome. As a big fan of jupyter and zeppelin I am stoked to see notebooks entering the js data viz domain.

Curious as to know how developers view the notebook paradigm? I feel like there is a sense of pride in working from the command line or vi, so wonder how these UI heavy approaches are received by the js/python/scala community.

Re: Show HN: Observable Notebooks

#23

Post by mbostock »

polalavik wrote: post #19

How is this different than Ipython/Jupyter notebooks? Whys everyone freaking out about this.

A few differences. 1. You don’t have to install anything, so running (or forking) someone else’s notebook is as simple as clicking a link. 2. It’s reactive, which means simpler code and better feedback, particularly when building user interfaces or analyzing realtime data. 3. It runs in the browser so you have direct access to powerful graphics (and GPU computation): Canvas, SVG, WebGL. 4. You can quickly import code for reuse from other notebooks, making a notebook a kind of lightweight library as well as a human-readable document.

Re: Show HN: Observable Notebooks

#25

Post by dpweb »

Really useful tool to iterate and riff on ideas.

The visualizations especially good as a feature to promote it.

im sure im not alone id love to create pretty charts and would wow a customer.. But cant justify spending the cycles to fully learn d3 etc..

Re: Show HN: Observable Notebooks

#27

Post by jashkenas »

d--b wrote: post #24

FYI: got some 'Oops, an unexpected error occurred.' error message, then the notebook I was testing just disappeared.

I'm afraid that we're running into a database error at the moment. We're on it...

Edit 1: Deploying the fix now...

Edit 2: ... and we're back.

Re: Show HN: Observable Notebooks

#28

Post by aw3c2 »

danso wrote: post #7

Just in case people were wondering, the site seems to have been overwhelmed for the past 10-15 minutes. But there's a YouTube demo of the tech https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16275040 I guess an oversimplified description would be that this is like a Jupyter Notebook specifically for JavaScript. Libraries like D3 are pre-loaded and immediately accessible. Am definitely interested in hearing the details about wha…

There are many online services for hosted Jupyter Notebooks. mybinder, Google, Intel, Microsoft etc etc

Re: Show HN: Observable Notebooks

#29

Post by subbu »

jashkenas wrote: post #27
d--b wrote: post #24

FYI: got some 'Oops, an unexpected error occurred.' error message, then the notebook I was testing just disappeared.

I'm afraid that we're running into a database error at the moment. We're on it... Edit 1: Deploying the fix now... Edit 2: ... and we're back.

I thought I broke it :)
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