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Show HN: Observable Notebooks

beta.observablehq.com

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Re: Show HN: Observable Notebooks

#121

Post by Yizahi »

acosmism wrote: post #37
goatlover wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason why you would want to run Python and that's the huge, well supported scientific computing libraries it has.

https://gryd.us supports python

> ".edu email required"

So USA-centric. My second biggest university in Ukraine (50k students) doesn't have any .edu domains and certainly didn't supply them to the students. Same as first biggest university and just about every other in the country, they all use regional or other general domains.

Re: Show HN: Observable Notebooks

#122

Post by anentropic »

danso wrote: post #7

Just in case people were wondering, the site seems to have been overwhelmed for the past 10-15 minutes. But there's a YouTube demo of the tech https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16275040 I guess an oversimplified description would be that this is like a Jupyter Notebook specifically for JavaScript. Libraries like D3 are pre-loaded and immediately accessible. Am definitely interested in hearing the details about wha…

if you're going to be using an online hosted service ("sign in via GitHub") then you don't need to install and run Python to use a Jupyter Notebook...

Re: Show HN: Observable Notebooks

#123

Post by chatmasta »

Glanced over this yesterday, came back to it today when I saw it was by jashkenas, who has done some real innovative work over the years. @jashkenas -- is this your primary project now? Are you building a business around this or is it more for fun/open source?

Would be curious to hear plans to monetize it.

Re: Show HN: Observable Notebooks

#124

Post by jdironman »

jashkenas wrote: post #96

Before this post fades from the front page, I just wanted to take a moment to link to some of the things folks have been publishing this morning: Nick Strayer shows how t-SNE is similar (equivalent?) to a force-directed graph layout: https://beta.observablehq.com/@nstrayer/physics-based-t-sne Jim Bumgardner published a tutorial that starts with drawing circles with canvas, then fibonacci spirals, then colorful sunflo…

What happens with the image rotation 'jump' between 302 and 303 degrees on the last one? Why does it do that?

Re: Show HN: Observable Notebooks

#125

Post by dyarosla »

Legitimately very cool. As someone else mentioned I’d also really like the ability to embed these on another page, and possibly have these run locally offline.

I do have a question: for notebooks linking to outside notebooks: is there anything that prevents breakages? Ie external notebook variable name changes or is completely removed, would parts of my notebook relying on that one then also fail? Is there some kind of public versioning of notebooks so that I can refer to a value at notebook ref,v1?

Re: Show HN: Observable Notebooks

#126

Post by jashkenas »

dyarosla wrote: post #125

Legitimately very cool. As someone else mentioned I’d also really like the ability to embed these on another page, and possibly have these run locally offline. I do have a question: for notebooks linking to outside notebooks: is there anything that prevents breakages? Ie external notebook variable name changes or is completely removed, would parts of my notebook relying on that one then also fail? Is there some kind…

That's a fantastic question.

It's not ready yet, but we're hoping to roll out import pinning for notebooks soon.

Each notebook is versioned — every time you make a change and re-run the cell, a version is saved to the server. And every time you publish, that's a publication of a specific version of the notebook.

Our plan is to pin the version of any code you import from outside the notebook, including require(npm-module), import {value} from "other-notebook", and even the version of the Observable standard library that was current when you wrote the notebook.

Hopefully, that should provide a good foundation for robust notebooks that don't break as libraries change over time. Of course, you'll be able to re-pin a new version if you want to upgrade something.

Re: Show HN: Observable Notebooks

#127

Post by dunham »

So I finally got around to taking a good look at this last night after work. I adapted a single page d3 app that I'd written many years ago to model sous vide cooking.

A few comments:

- Probably needs some more documentation. Maybe a quick reference for the API that's available and a list of keystrokes. I will admit though, I bailed halfway through the tutorials so I could start playing with it.

- I'd like to be able to drag and drop cells (or otherwise rearrange them). I created my page, but then wanted to better organize it. Making new cells and cut/pasting content was annoying.

- The Opt-Return thing is killing me. It executes the cell in Jupyter and splits the cell into two in Observable. I can't think of a reason I'd want to split a cell in the middle. I believe splitting in the middle will always result in two cells with syntax errors. Perhaps just always create and focus a new, empty cell?

- It'd be nice if there was an easy way to delete a cell. Currently, I'm emptying it and then joining with the previous via option-del, which concatenates cells. I believe joining two cells with content will always result in a syntax error, so I'm not sure the utility of that.

- The samples were useful, especially for learning how d3 fits into this. I ended up breaking up a long function (to build the d3 graph) into multiple cells, taking cues from the samples. (I also learned that d3 has changed a little since v3.)

It would also be nice to be able to rename variables (i.e. refactor), but that's not a critical feature.

Re: Show HN: Observable Notebooks

#128

Post by acosmism »

Yizahi wrote: post #121
acosmism wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://gryd.us supports python

> ".edu email required" So USA-centric. My second biggest university in Ukraine (50k students) doesn't have any .edu domains and certainly didn't supply them to the students. Same as first biggest university and just about every other in the country, they all use regional or other general domains.

they support international edu emails as well. have you tried signing up?

Re: Show HN: Observable Notebooks

#129

Post by daotoad »

Nice work, it looks pretty slick. You have a right to be proud of your work.

But....

IMO, the project name is a disaster.

If successful it will muddy the water on searches for RxJS (and other Rx) observables.

Please do like the Amber.js team did when they learned of a name comflict and rebrand as Ember.js. That would be awesome.

Re: Show HN: Observable Notebooks

#130

Post by dyarosla »

jashkenas wrote: post #126
dyarosla wrote: post #125

Legitimately very cool. As someone else mentioned I’d also really like the ability to embed these on another page, and possibly have these run locally offline. I do have a question: for notebooks linking to outside notebooks: is there anything that prevents breakages? Ie external notebook variable name changes or is completely removed, would parts of my notebook relying on that one then also fail? Is there some kind…

That's a fantastic question. It's not ready yet, but we're hoping to roll out import pinning for notebooks soon. Each notebook is versioned — every time you make a change and re-run the cell, a version is saved to the server. And every time you publish, that's a publication of a specific version of the notebook. Our plan is to pin the version of any code you import from outside the notebook, including require(npm-mod…

Awesome. Thanks for replying. I'll definitely be watching your team at work :)
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