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JupyterCon: I don't like Notebooks [slides]

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

#81

Post by cdancette »

daveguy wrote: post #73
FridgeSeal wrote: post #24

I seriously cannot agree more. Jupyter notebooks were fun to use for a bit, then I hit the inevitable wall of "ok, now let's turn this into a real, properly built script, but now everything is breaking for inexplicable reasons". Notebooks are fine for early stage experimenting, but if you've got to the point where you start up you are relying on a notebook for anything, or your workflow consists of "start up notebook…

I don't even like it for initial experimentation and exploration. Much prefer the command line repl (the jupyter/ipython one). Faster feedback and easier navigation then you can just export the history when you're ready to capture and make permanent some workflow. It still requires going through and picking out the important bits, but reading the history like a story of commands is generally enough to pick out the im…

If you work with image processing, notebooks are very handy as they can display images directly. Also to display tables nicely with pandas, or for any data visualization actually.

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

#82

Post by commandlinefan »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #24

I seriously cannot agree more. Jupyter notebooks were fun to use for a bit, then I hit the inevitable wall of "ok, now let's turn this into a real, properly built script, but now everything is breaking for inexplicable reasons". Notebooks are fine for early stage experimenting, but if you've got to the point where you start up you are relying on a notebook for anything, or your workflow consists of "start up notebook…

Wow, I thought I was the only one. I guess the biggest lesson I've ever learned from the internet is that I'm never the only one.

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

#83

Post by mbrumlow »

I think notebooks are neat, and can be a useful tool, especially for learning. But until the last few days I had no clue people were trying to use them for actual software development. To me this is a mistake, and adds a lot of tooling to what was and should be fairly simple process of opening up a text editor (of your choice, mine will be emacs). I am also fairly shocked there is a conference around this idea. I feel that this is a fad and distraction :/. It is a shame so much effort is being spent on this idea as a tool for building software. I think its focus should be on becoming a good aid in teaching people concepts. The last thing I want required to write software is a web browser.

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

#84

Post by bunderbunder »

cdancette wrote: post #81
daveguy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even like it for initial experimentation and exploration. Much prefer the command line repl (the jupyter/ipython one). Faster feedback and easier navigation then you can just export the history when you're ready to capture and make permanent some workflow. It still requires going through and picking out the important bits, but reading the history like a story of commands is generally enough to pick out the im…

If you work with image processing, notebooks are very handy as they can display images directly. Also to display tables nicely with pandas, or for any data visualization actually.

That's my problem. I agree that notebooks create a troublesome dev situation, but "%matplotlib inline" and stuff like the pivot table plugin keep me crawling back.

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

#85

Post by draw_down »

I don’t have much experience with these but it sounds like using Excel- easy to get up and running, but the more you use it as a program the more painful it gets.

Professionals come into contact with such disasters and eventually get jaded on the tool itself, because they know where the story is going even if it hasn’t gotten there yet. Luckily there are always those astute souls ready to point out that we shouldn’t be such snobs, because the tool has good parts. We know, that’s why it got used in the first place.

Oh well. Where there’s muck there’s brass, I suppose.

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

#87

Post by kovek »

daveguy wrote: post #73
FridgeSeal wrote: post #24

I seriously cannot agree more. Jupyter notebooks were fun to use for a bit, then I hit the inevitable wall of "ok, now let's turn this into a real, properly built script, but now everything is breaking for inexplicable reasons". Notebooks are fine for early stage experimenting, but if you've got to the point where you start up you are relying on a notebook for anything, or your workflow consists of "start up notebook…

I don't even like it for initial experimentation and exploration. Much prefer the command line repl (the jupyter/ipython one). Faster feedback and easier navigation then you can just export the history when you're ready to capture and make permanent some workflow. It still requires going through and picking out the important bits, but reading the history like a story of commands is generally enough to pick out the im…

Will the REPL allow you to easily edit function definitions and then reinterpret them?

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

#88

Post by Cmerlyn »

mbrumlow wrote: post #83

I think notebooks are neat, and can be a useful tool, especially for learning. But until the last few days I had no clue people were trying to use them for actual software development. To me this is a mistake, and adds a lot of tooling to what was and should be fairly simple process of opening up a text editor (of your choice, mine will be emacs). I am also fairly shocked there is a conference around this idea. I fee…

> I feel that this is a fad and distraction

LMAO. Using a notebook with executable code is literally the modern version of Knuth's literate programming.

While I personally don't do much of it, I loved Peter Norvig's python notebooks[1]. Go through one of them and tell me it's not a good aid in teaching people concepts.

[1]: https://github.com/norvig/pytudes/

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

#89

Post by XorNot »

analog31 wrote: post #80
Certhas wrote: post #60

I have tought Python with notebooks to scientists and we always emphasize the pipeline: Play with your code in the notebook, when you know what the right way to split it is, turn cells into functions. When you have a decent body of functions turn them into a module. Notebooks excel as ad hoc interfaces to libraries and modules. They don't replace them. I'm not sure the problems with scientists' code are enabled by no…

This seems like a decent progression for easing beginners into the basics of good programming practices. It's certainly not a Jupyter problem per se. I went through a similar progression when I learned BASIC in high school, in 1981. Projects grow to a size where they become unmanageable without some structure. In my view, the importance of documentation is huge. I've been programming for a long time. I don't write so…

Notebooks for me were something I found after iPython Qt console, when I was getting frustrated at how hard it was to replay a set of scripts to get back to my state.

I always view them as an execute in order abstraction. I suspect what we really need to improve them is a subset of python which only deals in immutable data structures somehow - and then let notebooks branch off that immutable state but still be "execute forward" only.

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

#90

Post by gp7 »

My experience with notebooks matches the one presented here. For me the most disappointing thing is that notebooks are JSON, and not just marked up .pys. The cons of this decision outweighs the pros for me.

One thing though--one of the best books I've read, Trefethen's ATAP, was written as a collection of .m files, which when run would produce a pdf of each chapter. The .m files were filled with small formatting details that were simply omitted from the generated book. The slides suggest something equivalent is not possible with notebooks. That's unfortunate.

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