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JupyterCon: I don't like Notebooks [slides]

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

#31

Post by dagw »

pleasecalllater wrote: post #27

The code written by a couple of "data scientists" I was working with is the worst code I have ever seen. They don't care, they just want to have an experimental results. The problem starts when their experimental "code" needs to be used on production or they are asked to describe how it works. Why cannot we just get good programmers and train them as data scientists?

Why cannot we just get good programmers and train them as data scientists?

For the same reason we can't just get good programmers and train then in biology or chemistry or structural engineering. Sure they exist, as do data scientists that are really good programmers, it's just that they're more rare and in very high demand.

Often much easier to find a domain expert and a programmer and have the programmer rework the code done by the domain expert. In fact that used to be my job for a while (working with physicists), and it was actually quite fun.

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

#32

Post by j_4 »

I absolutely love Jupyter as a computer science student who uses it a lot to fiddle with new concepts, create visualizations, or write markdown reports with annotated code. I do agree with some points, though.

The problems with state felt sort of overstated (heehee), but it obviously is an issue. I always wonder why the menu option Kernel -> Restart & Run All is not a first class citizen, with a big red button at the top of the window. It's my main way of interacting with the notebook for anything that takes under a minute to run. Running cells one by one throughout the netbook isn't very useful. You either want to rerun the cell you're working on, or clear the state just in case and run everything.

Module versioning is another thing that should be a no-brainer.

I also wish the notebooks diffed better when it comes to SCM, without all the JSON artifacts.

Proper integration with existing Python tools/IDEs would be wonderful.

Also yeah, kernel sharing is one of the most horrific ideas I've heard recently.

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

#33

Post by kkitay »

tw1010 wrote: post #20

I wish we didn't have a culture of being bitterly angry in our talks.

I agree. Found the "I know a few things" spiel distasteful, and the general tone to be patronizing and rude. Attitudes likes this are negatively impactful and points for or against notebooks can be made without the toxicity.

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

#34

Post by sweezyjeezy »

pleasecalllater wrote: post #27

The code written by a couple of "data scientists" I was working with is the worst code I have ever seen. They don't care, they just want to have an experimental results. The problem starts when their experimental "code" needs to be used on production or they are asked to describe how it works. Why cannot we just get good programmers and train them as data scientists?

I've worked with a few people who are software engineers -> data scientists. They were great at bringing good coding / database practices into the team. That said, their lack of formal statistics training was definitely a problem from time to time, and they seemed to show as much disregard for it as data scientists have for engineering practices (at least the ones talked about on this thread). This can be equally damaging.

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

#35

Post by tw1010 »

kkitay wrote: post #33
tw1010 wrote: post #20

I wish we didn't have a culture of being bitterly angry in our talks.

I agree. Found the "I know a few things" spiel distasteful, and the general tone to be patronizing and rude. Attitudes likes this are negatively impactful and points for or against notebooks can be made without the toxicity.

It's mostly a critical mass problem, as far as I see it. If everyone had a different more positive tone, the one bitter one would stick out (and mostly people wouldn't even think about choosing that tone in the first place). But since that's what a lot of people do, that becomes the energy-minimizing approach to take. I suppose the best thing one can do is to have the courage to go against the stream ("vote with your feet") and find a way to make your presentation optimistic and happy (e.g. Julia Evans), despite the fact that you know there will be bitter people who judge you as cringy.

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

#36

Post by coldtea »

pjmlp wrote: post #29
genofon wrote: 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, I find them annoying as well. They aren't fun, don't have anything to do with technical content and just put me off, specially if the presenter thinks s/he could have a 2nd job as stand up comedian.

>They aren't fun

That's subjective.

>don't have anything to do with technical content

Most public presentations / speeches contain a few jokes. They don't have much to do with the technical content either, but they help people pay attention and ease in the speech.

It's not like we don't have enough boring powerpoint presentations already. It's also not like those going into the trouble of compiling the slides and sharing their knowledge owe us anything...

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

#38

Post by coldtea »

kkitay wrote: post #33
tw1010 wrote: post #20

I wish we didn't have a culture of being bitterly angry in our talks.

I agree. Found the "I know a few things" spiel distasteful, and the general tone to be patronizing and rude. Attitudes likes this are negatively impactful and points for or against notebooks can be made without the toxicity.

>Found the "I know a few things" spiel distasteful

And if he hadn't included it, all the comments would be "yeah, and who is he to talk".

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

#39

Post by pjmlp »

coldtea wrote: post #36
pjmlp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I find them annoying as well. They aren't fun, don't have anything to do with technical content and just put me off, specially if the presenter thinks s/he could have a 2nd job as stand up comedian.

> They aren't fun That's subjective. > don't have anything to do with technical content Most public presentations / speeches contain a few jokes. They don't have much to do with the technical content either, but they help people pay attention and ease in the speech. It's not like we don't have enough boring powerpoint presentations already. It's also not like those going into the trouble of compiling the slides and s…

If I want to get a laugh I go to stand up comedy show, theater, cinema,... not to a developers conference.

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

#40

Post by enriquto »

I love the notebook concept, it is the best way to show to other people pieces of working code and their results.

The jupyter implementation of notebooks has two serious problems, however:

1. The notebook source is not natively stored as a text file that you can easily edit with a text editor. You are forced to use the javascript interface.

2. The editor component has a lot of strange quirks to the point of being unusable.

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