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What’s wrong with computational notebooks?

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Re: What’s wrong with computational notebooks?

#31

Post by WorldMaker »

fryguy wrote: post #26
moultano wrote: post #5

I want a notebook where causality can only flow forward through the cells. I hate notebook time-loops where a variable from a deleted cell can still be in scope. 1. Checkpoint the interpreter state after every cell execution. 2. If I edit a cell, roll back to the previous checkpoint and let execution follow from there. I can't tell you how many times I've seen accidental persistence of dead state waste hours of peopl…

My problem with notebooks is that I feel like the natural mental model for them is a spreadsheet mental model, not a REPL mental model. Under that assumption, changing a calculation in the middle means that all of the cells that depend on that calculation would be updated, but instead you need to go and manually re-run the cells after it that depend on that calculation (or re-run the entire notebook) to see the effec…

That's something that I think Observable [1], in my modest usage, seems to do well.

[1] https://observablehq.com/

Re: What’s wrong with computational notebooks?

#32

Post by WorldMaker »

moultano wrote: post #5

I want a notebook where causality can only flow forward through the cells. I hate notebook time-loops where a variable from a deleted cell can still be in scope. 1. Checkpoint the interpreter state after every cell execution. 2. If I edit a cell, roll back to the previous checkpoint and let execution follow from there. I can't tell you how many times I've seen accidental persistence of dead state waste hours of peopl…

Going back to even some of the earliest literate programming exercises by Knuth, there's a lot of demonstrable usefulness in being able to write the code "out of order", or to at least demonstrate it in such form. It's not entirely out of the question that setup requirements aren't interesting to the main narrative flow, and maybe even distract from it, such that the "natural" place to put stuff in say a textbook is in the back as an Appendix.

A good notebook (again, similar to early literate programming tools) should help you piece the final execution flow back into the procedural flow needed for the given compiler/interpreter, but it probably should still let you rearrange it to best fit your narrative/thesis/arc.

Re: What’s wrong with computational notebooks?

#33

Post by nkurz »

willj wrote: post #24
moultano wrote: post #5

I want a notebook where causality can only flow forward through the cells. I hate notebook time-loops where a variable from a deleted cell can still be in scope. 1. Checkpoint the interpreter state after every cell execution. 2. If I edit a cell, roll back to the previous checkpoint and let execution follow from there. I can't tell you how many times I've seen accidental persistence of dead state waste hours of peopl…

Might be worthy trying out nodebook [1] which at least enforces the forward directionality you mentioned. Also polynote by Netflix, as a user below mentioned. [1] https://github.com/stitchfix/nodebook

s/Netflix/Stitch Fix/

(don't reply, and I'll delete this)

Re: What’s wrong with computational notebooks?

#36

Post by rossdavidh »

I think Computational Notebooks are a great idea, and yet I have the feeling that we are in the process of seeing them overapplied. They are wonderful for certain situations, and teaching or demonstrating code to others is right in its sweet spot.

I get the impression that people are creeping in the direction of trying to do everything with one tool, which sounds like it would end up in the same swamp that Eclipse went into. Sometimes, you need to use different tools for different tasks, and not everything should integrate. Just my opinion.

Re: What’s wrong with computational notebooks?

#37

Post by sillysaurusx »

IanCal wrote: post #19
moultano wrote: post #5

I want a notebook where causality can only flow forward through the cells. I hate notebook time-loops where a variable from a deleted cell can still be in scope. 1. Checkpoint the interpreter state after every cell execution. 2. If I edit a cell, roll back to the previous checkpoint and let execution follow from there. I can't tell you how many times I've seen accidental persistence of dead state waste hours of peopl…

If people are wondering about cases that can cause this - a common one (for me) is a mis-spelled variable name. If you go back and change it, the old one is still there and if you make the same mistake twice you will have code that runs but doesn't work. It's then really not obvious why it doesn't work.

It's best to think of the notebook as a REPL. So you'd want to run `del foo` on the old name.

In fact, this is a good counterexample. Why should the notebook delete the old variable name? What if its value is a thread currently executing?

Notebooks are REPLs, and it's better to get used to that than to try to enforce some confusing time traveling.

Re: What’s wrong with computational notebooks?

#38

Post by panic »

moultano wrote: post #5

I want a notebook where causality can only flow forward through the cells. I hate notebook time-loops where a variable from a deleted cell can still be in scope. 1. Checkpoint the interpreter state after every cell execution. 2. If I edit a cell, roll back to the previous checkpoint and let execution follow from there. I can't tell you how many times I've seen accidental persistence of dead state waste hours of peopl…

RunKit does this: https://runkit.com/home

> RunKit allows you to rewind your work to a previous point, even filesystem changes are rewound!

Re: What’s wrong with computational notebooks?

#39

Post by sillysaurusx »

fhennig wrote: post #25
stared wrote: post #6

(A frequent Jupyter Notebook user here. For data exploration, and teaching deep learning - then Colab is indispensable.) The main question is: what are the alternatives, for data exploration (and sharing its results). Similarly, for data science tool demos, Notebooks shine. IMHO the problem is not in the notebooks, but in how they are being used (i.e. the workflow). By writing scripts in py files, and using notebooks…

Yes, the article mentions users copy pasting snippets from their personal "library". Well, that could just be made into an actual library of functions to call. I'm currently at uni enrolled in an AI/ML degree, and there are a lot of people with no previous exposure to programming. It's just that most people don't know that these things are possible, don't want to learn another tool (IDE) and are not interested in lon…

most people don't know that these things are possible, don't want to learn another tool (IDE) and are not interested in longevity of the code, just in the results.

This approach is arguably more effective than wasting time trying to refactor everything into a library of functions.

Programming-as-crafting needs to be more of a thing. Not everything is written to be long-lasting. Even HN ushered the ugly code into hook functions that weren't shipped with the main codebase.

Re: What’s wrong with computational notebooks?

#40

Post by jacobolus »

WorldMaker wrote: post #31
fryguy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with notebooks is that I feel like the natural mental model for them is a spreadsheet mental model, not a REPL mental model. Under that assumption, changing a calculation in the middle means that all of the cells that depend on that calculation would be updated, but instead you need to go and manually re-run the cells after it that depend on that calculation (or re-run the entire notebook) to see the effec…

That's something that I think Observable [1], in my modest usage, seems to do well. [1] https://observablehq.com/

Yep, the real complaint is “dead state”, not out of order execution. Worrying about linear flow per se turns out to be misguided based on lack of imagination for/experience with a better model: reactive re-rendering of dependent cells. Observable entirely solves the dead state problem, in a much more effective way than just guaranteeing linear flow would do.

* * *

More generally, Observable solves or at least ameliorates every item in the linked article’s list of complaints. (In 2020, any survey about modern notebook environments really should be discussing it.)

I found the article quite superficial. More like “water cooler gripes from notebook users we polled” than fundamental problems with or opportunities for notebooks as a cognitive tool. I think you could have learned more or less the same thing from going to whatever online forum Jupyter users write their complaints at and skimming the discussion for a couple weeks.

I guess this might be the best we can hope for from the results of a questionnaire like this. But it seems crazy having an article about notebook UI which makes no mention of spreadsheets, literate programming, Mathematica, REPLs, Bret Victor’s work, etc.

From the title I was hoping for something more thoughtful and insightful.

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