Live data from Hacker News

JupyterCon: I don't like Notebooks [slides]

docs.google.com

1–10 of 112 posts

Re: JupyterCon: I don't like Notebooks [slides]

#3
post #2

Serious question, I don't want to attack this presentation but in general am I one of the few that finds meme annoying in slides?

No, you're not alone. For a presentation thats complaining about how something is hard to understand, I find all the meming distracting and unhelpful.

Re: JupyterCon: I don't like Notebooks [slides]

#4
post #2

Serious question, I don't want to attack this presentation but in general am I one of the few that finds meme annoying in slides?

I assume it works much better in a live presentation, where he is talking while running the slides. A 10-20 page deck or 3 page paper would have communicated this more readily as a stand-alone.

Re: JupyterCon: I don't like Notebooks [slides]

#5
Agree with most of the things in this presentation. BUT. I generally use Jupyter Notebooks for these things: - Play around with some libs and charts - Draw charts for my papers or whatever - In short: draft stuff

And, for serious stuff, of course, python in text files with modules, tests (pytest) etc.

Re: JupyterCon: I don't like Notebooks [slides]

#7
post #2

Serious question, I don't want to attack this presentation but in general am I one of the few that finds meme annoying in slides?

You're one of a few (myself included) but sadly I think reaction gifs and memes are here to stay even in technical presentations and articles.

Re: JupyterCon: I don't like Notebooks [slides]

#8
When I used notebooks the first time my mind automatically assumed the cells would work as a sort of data-flow variables and auto-update when a previous one changed.

Maybe a "this are potentially out of date" marker on out of order cells would help with the problem.

Re: JupyterCon: I don't like Notebooks [slides]

#10
I'll be honest and admit that I have barely used a Notebook, but I can see they have their place. They are very popular with scientists, where they are writing experimental code, much of which will be thrown away. For stuff that needs to be used in production then they seem like the wrong tool.

I had actually thought that they would be great for learning until I read this.

(I am a bit disappointed that the presentation doens't actually explain the reason for out of sequence execution, which seems to be one of the central complaints).

Post reply on HN