Deepnote, a Jupyter alternative, is going open source • Hacker News Board

Re: Deepnote, a Jupyter alternative, is going open source

#11

Post by culi » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 6:41 PM UTC

dbunskoek wrote: post #3

I’m not familiar with Deepnote, but I have quite a lot of experience with Jupyter, and if someone were to ask me if there are more modern alternatives I would immediately point them to marimo ( https://marimo.io/ ). For me marimo is already a successor to Jupyter, it has replaced it entirely for me.

I actually mostly use Jupyter for non-Python code (e.g. Julia or Ruby). How is Marimo's support for other languages?

Re: Deepnote, a Jupyter alternative, is going open source

#12

Post by cxr » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 6:42 PM UTC

I'm not involved in any capacity with the development or use of Jupyter—I think ipynb is fundamentally flawed at a deep level, starting with its (I)Python roots—but this company's framing of their product as "the successor to Jupyter notebook" comes across as passive aggressive at best and misleading at worst. What is their relationship to Jupyter besides building a Jupyter alternative?

Re: Deepnote, a Jupyter alternative, is going open source

#13

Post by 7moritz7 » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 6:43 PM UTC

drnick1 wrote: post #10

Are there any other people who hate notebooks? Give a plain old script anytime. Run and edit anywhere without extra packages or even a Web browser.

*anywhere that has the python runtime installed

ironically that makes jupyter more portable via colab

Re: Deepnote, a Jupyter alternative, is going open source

#14

Post by culi » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 6:44 PM UTC

drnick1 wrote: post #10

Are there any other people who hate notebooks? Give a plain old script anytime. Run and edit anywhere without extra packages or even a Web browser.

notebooks are great for sharing code with people who might have only a cursory knowledge of coding. It also helps highlight specific sections of code. Graphs and other outputs immediately proceeding the block of code that generates them can be really helpful as well

If a "script" gets too long and complicated, and it's a project I intend to present to others, I often reach for a notebook to organize the code in a more digestible format

Re: Deepnote, a Jupyter alternative, is going open source

#15

Post by ar_lan » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 6:46 PM UTC

The framing of this title makes it seem like Jupyter is dead. It, in fact, is not.

Re: Deepnote, a Jupyter alternative, is going open source

#16

Post by benatkin » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 6:46 PM UTC

joshgree8859 wrote: post #4

Framing of this seems a bit nasty tbh - jupyter deserves a little bit of respect on its name!

It isn't even a successor. A successor would be open source from the start!

Re: Deepnote, a Jupyter alternative, is going open source

#17

Post by ar_lan » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 6:47 PM UTC

kianN wrote: post #6

joshgree8859 wrote: post #4

Framing of this seems a bit nasty tbh - jupyter deserves a little bit of respect on its name!

I agree with this. I have no problem with a technical discussion comparing the features and discussing Jupyter’s shortcomings. But the Jupyter job postings and contribution graph screenshots felt both ill-spirited and not particularly relevant. There was interesting stuff here: the human readable format, auto publication. But the tone and framing bashing a reliable open source project really turned me off.

Yes, agree. To the point that I'm not very interested in looking them up.

Re: Deepnote, a Jupyter alternative, is going open source

#18

Post by sireat » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 6:48 PM UTC

bityard wrote: post #5

Jupyter does not have (or need) a successor.

Indeed regular Jupyter works so well on VS Code for solo work these days that there is no real need for a new entrant.

So what pain point are these new entrants trying to solve?

Sure there is an issue of .ipynb basically being a gnarly json ill suited for git but it is rare that I need to track down a particular git commit. Even then that json is not that hard to read.

Also I'd like an easier way to copy cells across different Jupyter notebooks, but at the end of day it is just Python and markdown not very hard to grok.

Re: Deepnote, a Jupyter alternative, is going open source

#19

Post by bee_rider » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 6:51 PM UTC

What’s these folks relationship to Jupyter? I guess they must be some of the really prominent Jupyter developers? Otherwise declaring their system the successor to such a widely used tool seems pretty presumptuous.

Re: Deepnote, a Jupyter alternative, is going open source

#20

Post by nixpulvis » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 6:51 PM UTC

drnick1 wrote: post #10

Are there any other people who hate notebooks? Give a plain old script anytime. Run and edit anywhere without extra packages or even a Web browser.

I have no real qualms with the idea of a notebook, as long as it's not adding a lot of custom magic. I should be able to share what I'm working on, iterate in a notebook with someone, then extract it into a standalone program without much thought.