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Observable Notebooks 2.0 Technology Preview

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Re: Observable Notebooks 2.0 Technology Preview

#21

Post by MantisShrimp90 »

dr__mario wrote: post #14

I'd love to love them but I don't: I can't seem to justify moving away from Python to use this. What advantages does JS offer for this use case? I' ve never felt that I couldn't do any visualization with Python (but I don't do nice newspaper figures).

Im in the same boat. In theory JavaScript holds more potential to make finely crafted visuals. But you're right, the ecosystem is so mature I still find other ecosystems lacking.

But if anything would change my opinion this has the right set of values

Re: Observable Notebooks 2.0 Technology Preview

#25

Post by jeffbee »

swyx wrote: post #24

i dont understand why Observable insists on topological execution. isn't out of order execution one of the biggest complaints about notebooks?

Why should irrelevant nerd junk be at the top of my notebook? If the point of the notebook is to inform and educate the reader, that's a distracting limitation.

Re: Observable Notebooks 2.0 Technology Preview

#26

Post by wonger_ »

dr__mario wrote: post #14

I'd love to love them but I don't: I can't seem to justify moving away from Python to use this. What advantages does JS offer for this use case? I' ve never felt that I couldn't do any visualization with Python (but I don't do nice newspaper figures).

Exporting as client-side webpages, maybe? I liked using it to prototype some interactive D3.js charts that I would later move to my website. Also some people just are more comfortable with JS than Python

Re: Observable Notebooks 2.0 Technology Preview

#27

Post by chaps »

MantisShrimp90 wrote: post #21
dr__mario wrote: post #14

I'd love to love them but I don't: I can't seem to justify moving away from Python to use this. What advantages does JS offer for this use case? I' ve never felt that I couldn't do any visualization with Python (but I don't do nice newspaper figures).

Im in the same boat. In theory JavaScript holds more potential to make finely crafted visuals. But you're right, the ecosystem is so mature I still find other ecosystems lacking. But if anything would change my opinion this has the right set of values

I'm not really a JavaScript person either, but that hasn't been the worst problem with observable. Tools like vega-lite and importable tools from other notebooks really reduces the amount of code I need to write. Like, I'm not writing d3 code for hours for a simple choropleth. What makes it easier is that I can query objects using SQL rather than lengthy JavaScript code.

Re: Observable Notebooks 2.0 Technology Preview

#28

Post by lvl155 »

I wish Bostock et al got paid. This is literally the pain of doing open source for some. You basically watch as other people get rich off of your life’s work.

That rambling aside, I like the idea of having a desktop app. Not sure where this notebook fits in with all their other products. They have the Framework which is actually pretty useful.

Re: Observable Notebooks 2.0 Technology Preview

#29

Post by chaps »

lvl155 wrote: post #28

I wish Bostock et al got paid. This is literally the pain of doing open source for some. You basically watch as other people get rich off of your life’s work. That rambling aside, I like the idea of having a desktop app. Not sure where this notebook fits in with all their other products. They have the Framework which is actually pretty useful.

Say more?

Re: Observable Notebooks 2.0 Technology Preview

#30

Post by mourner »

The updated syntax looks brilliant — can't wait to try it out by upgrading some of my older notebooks! I was worried about the future of Observable since the Canvas announcement — it felt like notebooks were being slowly phased out, but I'm glad to be proven wrong.

Any timeline on bringing the new format to the Web editor? For me, the biggest draw of Observable is being able to instantly start exploring and visualizing some data without ANY setup (creating some local files, installing dependencies, launching a dev server etc.) — just click "New notebook" and off you go, frictionless. I hope this remains a priority.

Also worth mentioning the data viz community aspect, which I used to enjoy a ton — it's a bummer that things like being able to follow certain users and see their new notebooks in a feed were phased out, and that trending notebooks are now hidden under the Help menu instead of being featured on the user's homepage. This might be one of the reasons I stopped coming back to the platform as often, although I realize building a community is very difficult and hard to monetize — just thought I'd share.

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