Comment by abdullahkhalids
Comment by abdullahkhalids 2 days ago
> Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You’ve got to work it over. The first draft of anything is shit. Ernest Hemingway
This is how all intellectual work proceeds. Most of the stuff you write is crap. After many iterations you produce one that is good enough for others. Should we take away the typewriter from the novel writers too, along with Jupyter notebooks from scientists, because most typed pages are crap?
I think, you completely missed the point... I compared Jupyter notebooks to shell sessions: it doesn't make them bad (they are, however, but for a different reason). I don't think that shell sessions are bad. The point I'm making is that Jupyter notebooks aren't suitable for being independent modules inside a larger program (and so are shell sessions). The alternative is obvious: just write the program.
Can you possibly make Jupyter notebook act like a module in a program? -- with a lot of effort and determination, yes. Should you be doing this, especially since the alternative is very accessible and produces far superior results? -- Of course no.
Using your metaphor, I'm not arguing for taking the typewriter away from the not-so-good writers. I'm arguing that maybe they can use a computer with a word processor, so that they don't waste so much paper.