Comment by Fraterkes

Comment by Fraterkes 2 days ago

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A bit off-topic, but my problem with any notebook type of tool (ie you create a document that mixes code, the output of that code, and text/media) is that they always feel like they're meant to be these quick, off the cuff ways to present data. But when I try to use them they just feel awkward and slow. (I tried doing a jupyter notebook with the vscode plugin, and while everything was very polished, it feld like I was ponderously coding in Word or something. The same was true for R-notebooks in rstudio. Maybe it's a better experience if you have a decently fast laptop)

taeric 2 days ago

I'm assuming you've seen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jiPeIFXb6U&t=61s? I know I found it far more amusing than I should have when it was released.

I will confess that I found Mathematica kind of neat back in the day. I never got as good with it as peers did. I'm curious if that would be different for me today.

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  • 3eb7988a1663 2 days ago

    That video cannot be seen without watching Jeremy Howard's rebuttal: I Like Notebooks. I also believe this was the video that got him kicked out of a conference(?) because it was too confrontational? Which was just ugly for a guy who clearly loves being an educator.

    [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q6sLbz37gk

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lamename 2 days ago

IME notebooks in VS Code are even worse (but improving). Jupyter lab is faster...but that depends on how fast you prefer ;)

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  • wenc 2 days ago

    I have the exact opposite experience — VS Code notebooks are much snappier and are possibly the best Jupyter implementations I’ve ever used (better and more responsive than vanilla Jupyter or Jupyter labs).

    VS code notebooks also support LSPs with refactoring, typing etc. Black is supported. Step by step debugging is supported. Venv is built in.

    There are so many conveniennces in VS Code that whenever I have to use Jupyter Lab I feel a lot of stuff is missing.

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    • 3eb7988a1663 2 days ago

      I agree with you that the VSCode experience feels superior. It integrates a lot of the other various IDE widgets into the notebook experience. Code formatting, variable definitions, spell checker, non-garbage tier code hints, etc. The little timer noting the time it takes to run a cell alone is a huge boon.

      My only complaint is how white space heavy the VSCode layout is by default. Probably can be customized, but I have never dug into it.

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    • adolph 2 days ago

      Killer feature of VS Code notebooks is Vim keybindings. It also manages movement between cells, so you have to be very aware of the current mode.

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      • dmurray 2 days ago

        Hitting Escape in normal mode takes you out of editing the cell and into "notebook manipulation mode" instead. This is so counter to the way Vim normally works - Esc should leave you in normal mode no matter where you started - that I found it almost unusable until I realised I could just remap that binding. I made it Shift-Esc and am very happy with it now.

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Fraterkes 2 days ago

Also I always think it's a littly sad that Jupyter was one of the best shots for Julia to get more mainstream attention, and instead the notebooks people write are basically exclusively python

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  • paddy_m 2 days ago

    Also the Julia people wrote their own notebook system called Pluto. Which is so on brand for them. It might be technically better, but they miss out on the whole jupyter ecosystem, further isolating the language.

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bsimpson 2 days ago

I've only used them in Colab, which feels a lot like a Codepen. It's a self-contained scratchpad that's easily linkable to send to others.

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wenc 2 days ago

Sounds like you’ve diagnosed your issue in the last line.

Notebooks are usually not inherently slow — I use Jupyter in VS Code running off a remote server and it’s snappy.

I have a MacBook Pro 2020.

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zeofig 2 days ago

I have to admit that I hate them and view them as abominations. But that's just my personal opinion.

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