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JupyterLab is ready for users

blog.jupyter.org

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Re: JupyterLab is ready for users

#221

Post by wenc »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #204

I am going to ask a very dumb question, but if I am not an exploratory data scientist, what and how do i use jupyter/ipython for? I keep meaning to try it out but never quite got round to anything but toy stuff. how does it fit into a developer workflow, or do i need a different mindset? what should I try to do with this beta to get my mind right is probably the best question

No, it's a fair question.

To be honest, if you're not doing exploration or quick prototyping work (you don't have to be a data scientist though), Jupyter might not be that useful to you.

Jupyter is really useful when you have intermediate results that you don't want to keep regenerating. It lets you test different ideas at any given point in the program without re-running everything above it -- kind of like a pause button. (garden of forking paths) And if you do have to change any code, you can change things in-situ without re-running the entire program. It's like programming with a tape-recorder with mutable state.... hmm, ok maybe that isn't a good analogy, but close enough.

For quick scripts, I reach for vim and run my code on the console, and insert "import ipdb;ipdb.set_trace()" wherever I need breakpoints.

For more complex work where there are different permutations, and many throwaway branches of ideas that I have to test, Jupyter (or any notebook type tool) is way more useful.

Re: JupyterLab is ready for users

#222

Post by wenc »

fizixer wrote: post #180
fizixer wrote: post #108

So let's say I am progressing inside a jupyter notebook top to bottom. I run code blocks, then some markdown, then code blocks, and so on. At some point I need to drop down to the terminal to run something. I run commands in the terminal I collect some results or collect some info and go back to my notebook to resume my work inside it. Later I need to look up something in a text file. I open a certain text file. Brow…

Replying to my own comment, I have a plot and a text file open side by side. I want to change a value in the text file and I want the plot to be updated automatically. The update might not be trivial, behind the scenes maybe the text file is an input to a simulation that runs for a minute, then computes some values in a table that are used for the plot. Can Jupyter allow you to do that? Point being, offering an IDE i…

With respect to your parent comment: the IDE can be made to log UI context switches, but it cannot interpret intention. This is a very unusual and I suspect very sub-optimal thing for an IDE to support, whatever year it is supposed to have been built. If you really want those events to be recorded, you need to either annotate your code, or programatically have it invoke something.

As for graphics updating on file-change event, that can probably be supported through an extension. This is similar to how certain LaTeX editors automatically re-render the doc on a change-event.

Re: JupyterLab is ready for users

#223

Post by analog31 »

veritas3241 wrote: post #25
sinab wrote: post #21

This is really exciting for the team! However I don't think that I am particularly sold on the notebook style of coding.. its possible that I simply haven't found a good use case for it, can anyone suggest an example where the notebook style outperforms a simple script based style? For reference, I use Matlab and Mathematica pretty heavily, and python in a text editor like sublime along with a terminal running ipytho…

I find notebooks to be great for prototyping longer pipelines or processes. Instead of having to constantly get fresh data, particularly if it's from an external API, the notebook can persist the data in memory and you can iterate on the next piece of the process right there. I then take that and make it a more formal script/process w/ version control and all that fun stuff. They're also really great for learning. I…

I'm using Python for lab automation, so my data comes fresh from an experiment. I've found that keeping stuff in memory is extremely convenient until the kernel shuts down for some reason (e.g., I inadvertently kill it while forgetting that I've left a notebook open).

Still, I love having my data collection scripts documented right there with the subsequent analysis. So, I've disciplined myself to handle experimental data in one of two ways:

* For "small" data, format it as a Python thing (list, dict, whatever is appropriate), and paste it into the next cell as an input. I haven't found a way to do this automatically, and I'm careful not to make things too automatic lest I run a cell and over-write old data.

* For "big" data, dump it to a file. I just turn the system time into a filename, to avoid over-writing an old file.

I don't think I've come up with the last word, on using Jupyter as a self data collecting lab notebook, nor am I yet 100% certain that it's even a good idea. This is a work in progress, but much better than anything else I've ever tried. For complicated experiments, I still create stand alone Python programs to control things.

Re: JupyterLab is ready for users

#224

Post by acdha »

pmart123 wrote: post #8
qubex wrote: post #4

Mathematica is wonderful in terms of sheer computational power, but the notebook interface it presents is hopelessly outclassed nowadays by initiatives such as these. I keep hoping Wolfram will spring some impressive new interface on us that will enhance usability for power users (rather than their weird attempts at bringing ‘computation’ to random casual users), but... I'm giving up hope. This looks very impressive.

As someone who used Matlab and Mathematica in college, I'm not sure I'd want to have a closed source solution really take off again at this point. While they provided great products and documentation, they also made it much more difficult to share code/visualizations due to restrictive and expensive licensing. Ultimately, I think the ability to share information easily should help spur scientific advancement.

A number of years ago I knew a postdoc who bought a student copy of Mathematica at the university bookstore so he could use it as part of a short-term collaboration without dropping a non-trivial chunk of his grants on a full license. Shortly after he installed it, the department chair got a personal email from Stephen Wolfram asking what someone who wasn't a graduate student was doing with a student license.

This supported the upward trend of interest in open source and especially ipython around the labs.

Re: JupyterLab is ready for users

#225

Post by po84 »

mav3r1ck wrote: post #174

I love the term "reproducible computational narratives" from their post. This is a great step toward making software accessible for everyone. In addition, imagine how transparent governments and open source communities can be by helping explain the algorithms in use with a clear provided sense of understanding for everyone. On the project level, it can be useful for keeping it simple. It's all good stuff!

Though a year old, https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-state-of-jupyter might interest you as well.

Re: JupyterLab is ready for users

#227

Post by abetlen »

Quenty wrote: post #30

If you like Juypter, Google colabs has a google-docs style juypter notebook that’s quite good. It’s nice for collaboration. https://colab.research.google.com/notebook

There's also an official Google drive extension for jupyterlab worth checking out. I know they demoed it a few times before the v1.0 release it looks very promising.

https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab-google-drive

Also worth checking out is the renderers, the vega and geojson ones are really cool.

Re: JupyterLab is ready for users

#228

Post by dragonwriter »

abetlen wrote: post #227
Quenty wrote: post #30

If you like Juypter, Google colabs has a google-docs style juypter notebook that’s quite good. It’s nice for collaboration. https://colab.research.google.com/notebook

There's also an official Google drive extension for jupyterlab worth checking out. I know they demoed it a few times before the v1.0 release it looks very promising. https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab-google-drive Also worth checking out is the renderers, the vega and geojson ones are really cool.

> There's also an official Google drive extension for jupyterlab worth checking out.

As the readme states, the realtime API it relies on has been deprecated.

Re: JupyterLab is ready for users

#229

Post by djhworld »

Anyone know of any maintained Docker images for this?

I'm not a fan of pip etc and prefer to isolate my notebooks in a docker container.

EDIT: never mind, you can run it using the official images by executing `start.sh jupyter lab`

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