5 ms·

The concept of Jupyer Notebooks is absolute fantastic. The product, unfortunately, fails at the basics of being a text editor. I'd wish the VSCode team could s

The concept of Jupyer Notebooks is absolute fantastic. The product, unfortunately, fails at the basics of being a text editor. I'd wish the VSCode team could somehow integrate the concept. They seem to be excellent at execution. (Or, if they finish their work on "html zones" (block decorators in atom), I'll start doing it myself)

analog31 10y ago
Given that Jupyter works on a server / browser model, it should be possible to customize the browser without bothering the server. For instance, I imagine a plug-in that spiffs up the editing blocks within one of the major browsers. That way, you preserve compatibility across all browsers, but provide an option for those who want their preferred editing features. Admittedly, I don't use a code editor, perhaps because I'm just too old, and got used to living without one. I remember when being able to edit a program in full screen mode was a big deal. But I certainly wouldn't turn down better editing for Jupyter.
- AlexCoventry 10y ago
  It's far from perfect, but there is a jupyter notebook "browser" and editor for emacs: https://github.com/millejoh/emacs-ipython-notebook https://github.com/millejoh/emacs-ipython-notebook
- bagofmostlyh2o 10y ago
  I use wasavi, https://github.com/akahuku/wasavi https://github.com/akahuku/wasavi, which does exactly what you describe.
baq 10y ago
I agree about the editor part, it's quite bad compared to anything people actually use when developing software. ...but perhaps software developers aren't the target audience in the first place. I tried to use Jupyter a few times, first when it was still only IPython, and it never seemed to fit in my code-execute-fix workflow that you have when developing scripts. In particular having to always reset the kernel to reexecute everything from scratch drove me crazy.
- nnq 10y ago
  > code-execute-fix workflow Do you know of a better tool for such a flow, combined with the ability to have markdown+latex docs intermingled with the code? 'cause this is my workflow, but jupyter's code editor and kernell restart drives me crazy and anything else will have me keep the notes/docs separate from the code... And please don't suggest Mathematica :) I absolutely love it's ux/i, but nobody uses it in ML/AI...
  - arghIdontwantto 10y ago
    Haskell? You can have Literate Haskell (https://wiki.haskell.org/Literate_programming https://wiki.haskell.org/Literate_programming), you have ghci and while commercial, I think http://haskellformac.com http://haskellformac.com will be what you want
  - IanCal 10y ago
    I use rmarkdown for creating data reports to deliver to people http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/ http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/ You can use whatever editor you want, but I quite like rstudio (I'm generally not a huge R person, so an environment with more help is useful, whereas with python I'd prefer just my own setup). Edit - Importantly though, you actually don't need to use R, you can use python. I'm not sure how well that works with caching, as I've never tried it, but it's probably worth a go.
    - nnq 10y ago
      hmm... thanks for making me take another look around. I'm trying rstudio+python and rodeo tonight to see if I like them better. (Right now I use jupyter for some things, ipython gui for others, and pycharm for "real coding" tasks. Tried Spyder, but something about it makes it neither a good IDE nor a good notes/documentation system... though I can understand its appeal for Matlab folks).
- CmdrSprinkles 10y ago
  I would argue that the problem is that it IS targeted toward developers. In the sense of those who are developing new methods and making proof of concepts. Admittedly, most of my experience is with ipython but it is perfect for that. If there is a new algorithm/method I want to explore or I am figuring out an interface/structure, it is great. And I tend to not have to reset the kernel too often. In that sense, jupyter was a great idea as you can now integrate documentation with code in a nice format. Unfortunately, it also led to a strong focus on treating them as containers for the purpose of deploying code (more traditional software development).
Steeeve 10y ago
For emacs users, there are python source code blocks in org mode. http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/languages/ob-doc-python.html http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/languages/ob-doc-p... I haven't played with it yet, but another HN user pointed it out to me recently.
gressquel 10y ago
the UI is really bad. Idea is great from Microsoft but the execution leaves alot to be desired. I hope MS fixes this because I kinda like this service and can see myself using it.
- smortaz 10y ago
  Thanks for feedback. We hope to keep iterating on the UI in the coming year. We'd love to improve it based on your suggestions (we're admittedly weak on that front). nbhelp@microsoft.com.
gaius 10y ago
Right, this notebook or worksheet style interface isn't meant to be a text editor tho', or to develop software it's meant to interactively help you write a paper or a report. We had this in MathCAD in the '90s, where it used MS Word as it's "editor" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathcad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathcad
- smortaz 10y ago
  [msft] Yep. Check out Jupyter Lab which tries address other scenarios. A lightweight IDE with notebook, file, editor, windowing support: https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab
  - fperez_org 10y ago
    And btw, it's worth mentioning that in JupyterLab, we just merged a PR that will make embedding the Monaco editor (the editing component of VS code) much easier: https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/pull/1140 https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/pull/1140. With that in, now the Monaco integration is being worked on: https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/pull/1382 https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/pull/1382. We all want stronger editing capabilities, but it doesn't make sense for the Jupyter team to get into the business of writing text editors (plenty of better folks doing a great job on that already). So we're just trying to make it easier to integrate other text editors into the everyday workflow.
    - smortaz 10y ago
      [msft] Well, this is an honor - the creator of Jupyter commenting on this thread & not just any comment... but about embedding the Visual Studio Code editor in Jupyter Lab :). Thanks Fernando, Brian, Min & team for everything you've done with Jupyter. Looking fwd to using Jlab soon! s
      - fperez_org 10y ago
        +1 to the team that's been doing a phenomenal job on the project... These days I'm just an email answering machine :) But yes, JLab is shaping up quite nicely, opening up a lot of interesting possibilities. For advanced users/early adopters I think it's time to start playing with it (and filing issues for anything that's broken/sub-optimal, we really want to provide a great user experience with it once we hit 1.0).
pYQAJ6Zm 10y ago
I suggest having a look at the jupyter-vim-binding¹ extension. It improves the experience for those comfortable with Vim. ¹ https://github.com/lambdalisue/jupyter-vim-binding https://github.com/lambdalisue/jupyter-vim-binding
baldfat 10y ago
I absolutely LOVE Jupyter but I personally have found something better. I also love that Microsoft is behind making this happen with Jupyter. RStudio's new feature to R is Notebooks and it is available in RStudio version 1.0+. It takes what is great about Jupyter Notebooks and adds easier version control and much easier to batch process your reports. Which are both huge wins for me. http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/r_notebooks.html http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/r_notebooks.html Blog Post: https://blog.rstudio.org/2016/10/05/r-notebooks/ https://blog.rstudio.org/2016/10/05/r-notebooks/ "Interactive R Markdown As an authoring format, R Markdown bears many similarities to traditional notebooks like Jupyter and Beaker. However, code in notebooks is typically executed interactively, one cell at a time, whereas code in R Markdown documents is typically executed in batch. R Notebooks bring the interactive model of execution to your R Markdown documents, giving you the capability to work quickly and iteratively in a notebook interface without leaving behind the plain-text tools and production-quality output you’ve come to rely on from R Markdown."
a-saleh 10y ago
I listened to a podcast about jupyter [1] some time ago, and remebered them talking about the separation between the kernel and the presentation in jupyter, and that in theory, it should be relatively easy to write your own frontend, that just sends to correct messages to the zmq :-) Afaik, hydrogen plugin for atom does this [2] And there is another plugin that just wraps the notebook to live inside of atom [3] [1] https://talkpython.fm/episodes/show/44/project-jupyter-and-ipython https://talkpython.fm/episodes/show/44/project-jupyter-and-i... [2] https://atom.io/packages/hydrogen https://atom.io/packages/hydrogen [3] https://github.com/jupyter/atom-notebook https://github.com/jupyter/atom-notebook
smortaz 10y ago
[msft] You are quite correct that the REPL/cell paradigm has its pluses & minuses. That's why the follow on (Jupyter Lab), is addressing many of these issues. Check out: https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab

analog31 10y ago

Given that Jupyter works on a server / browser model, it should be possible to customize the browser without bothering the server. For instance, I imagine a plug-in that spiffs up the editing blocks within one of the major browsers. That way, you preserve compatibility across all browsers, but provide an option for those who want their preferred editing features. Admittedly, I don't use a code editor, perhaps because I'm just too old, and got used to living without one. I remember when being able to edit a program in full screen mode was a big deal. But I certainly wouldn't turn down better editing for Jupyter.

AlexCoventry 10y ago
It's far from perfect, but there is a jupyter notebook "browser" and editor for emacs: https://github.com/millejoh/emacs-ipython-notebook https://github.com/millejoh/emacs-ipython-notebook
bagofmostlyh2o 10y ago
I use wasavi, https://github.com/akahuku/wasavi https://github.com/akahuku/wasavi, which does exactly what you describe.

baq 10y ago

I agree about the editor part, it's quite bad compared to anything people actually use when developing software. ...but perhaps software developers aren't the target audience in the first place. I tried to use Jupyter a few times, first when it was still only IPython, and it never seemed to fit in my code-execute-fix workflow that you have when developing scripts. In particular having to always reset the kernel to reexecute everything from scratch drove me crazy.

nnq 10y ago
> code-execute-fix workflow Do you know of a better tool for such a flow, combined with the ability to have markdown+latex docs intermingled with the code? 'cause this is my workflow, but jupyter's code editor and kernell restart drives me crazy and anything else will have me keep the notes/docs separate from the code... And please don't suggest Mathematica :) I absolutely love it's ux/i, but nobody uses it in ML/AI...
- arghIdontwantto 10y ago
  Haskell? You can have Literate Haskell (https://wiki.haskell.org/Literate_programming https://wiki.haskell.org/Literate_programming), you have ghci and while commercial, I think http://haskellformac.com http://haskellformac.com will be what you want
- IanCal 10y ago
  I use rmarkdown for creating data reports to deliver to people http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/ http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/ You can use whatever editor you want, but I quite like rstudio (I'm generally not a huge R person, so an environment with more help is useful, whereas with python I'd prefer just my own setup). Edit - Importantly though, you actually don't need to use R, you can use python. I'm not sure how well that works with caching, as I've never tried it, but it's probably worth a go.
  - nnq 10y ago
    hmm... thanks for making me take another look around. I'm trying rstudio+python and rodeo tonight to see if I like them better. (Right now I use jupyter for some things, ipython gui for others, and pycharm for "real coding" tasks. Tried Spyder, but something about it makes it neither a good IDE nor a good notes/documentation system... though I can understand its appeal for Matlab folks).
CmdrSprinkles 10y ago
I would argue that the problem is that it IS targeted toward developers. In the sense of those who are developing new methods and making proof of concepts. Admittedly, most of my experience is with ipython but it is perfect for that. If there is a new algorithm/method I want to explore or I am figuring out an interface/structure, it is great. And I tend to not have to reset the kernel too often. In that sense, jupyter was a great idea as you can now integrate documentation with code in a nice format. Unfortunately, it also led to a strong focus on treating them as containers for the purpose of deploying code (more traditional software development).

Steeeve 10y ago

For emacs users, there are python source code blocks in org mode. http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/languages/ob-doc-python.html http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/languages/ob-doc-p... I haven't played with it yet, but another HN user pointed it out to me recently.

gressquel 10y ago

the UI is really bad. Idea is great from Microsoft but the execution leaves alot to be desired. I hope MS fixes this because I kinda like this service and can see myself using it.

smortaz 10y ago
Thanks for feedback. We hope to keep iterating on the UI in the coming year. We'd love to improve it based on your suggestions (we're admittedly weak on that front). nbhelp@microsoft.com.

gaius 10y ago

Right, this notebook or worksheet style interface isn't meant to be a text editor tho', or to develop software it's meant to interactively help you write a paper or a report. We had this in MathCAD in the '90s, where it used MS Word as it's "editor" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathcad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathcad

smortaz 10y ago
[msft] Yep. Check out Jupyter Lab which tries address other scenarios. A lightweight IDE with notebook, file, editor, windowing support: https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab
- fperez_org 10y ago
  And btw, it's worth mentioning that in JupyterLab, we just merged a PR that will make embedding the Monaco editor (the editing component of VS code) much easier: https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/pull/1140 https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/pull/1140. With that in, now the Monaco integration is being worked on: https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/pull/1382 https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/pull/1382. We all want stronger editing capabilities, but it doesn't make sense for the Jupyter team to get into the business of writing text editors (plenty of better folks doing a great job on that already). So we're just trying to make it easier to integrate other text editors into the everyday workflow.
  - smortaz 10y ago
    [msft] Well, this is an honor - the creator of Jupyter commenting on this thread & not just any comment... but about embedding the Visual Studio Code editor in Jupyter Lab :). Thanks Fernando, Brian, Min & team for everything you've done with Jupyter. Looking fwd to using Jlab soon! s
    - fperez_org 10y ago
      +1 to the team that's been doing a phenomenal job on the project... These days I'm just an email answering machine :) But yes, JLab is shaping up quite nicely, opening up a lot of interesting possibilities. For advanced users/early adopters I think it's time to start playing with it (and filing issues for anything that's broken/sub-optimal, we really want to provide a great user experience with it once we hit 1.0).

pYQAJ6Zm 10y ago

I suggest having a look at the jupyter-vim-binding¹ extension. It improves the experience for those comfortable with Vim. ¹ https://github.com/lambdalisue/jupyter-vim-binding https://github.com/lambdalisue/jupyter-vim-binding

baldfat 10y ago

I absolutely LOVE Jupyter but I personally have found something better. I also love that Microsoft is behind making this happen with Jupyter. RStudio's new feature to R is Notebooks and it is available in RStudio version 1.0+. It takes what is great about Jupyter Notebooks and adds easier version control and much easier to batch process your reports. Which are both huge wins for me. http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/r_notebooks.html http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/r_notebooks.html Blog Post: https://blog.rstudio.org/2016/10/05/r-notebooks/ https://blog.rstudio.org/2016/10/05/r-notebooks/ "Interactive R Markdown As an authoring format, R Markdown bears many similarities to traditional notebooks like Jupyter and Beaker. However, code in notebooks is typically executed interactively, one cell at a time, whereas code in R Markdown documents is typically executed in batch. R Notebooks bring the interactive model of execution to your R Markdown documents, giving you the capability to work quickly and iteratively in a notebook interface without leaving behind the plain-text tools and production-quality output you’ve come to rely on from R Markdown."

a-saleh 10y ago

I listened to a podcast about jupyter [1] some time ago, and remebered them talking about the separation between the kernel and the presentation in jupyter, and that in theory, it should be relatively easy to write your own frontend, that just sends to correct messages to the zmq :-) Afaik, hydrogen plugin for atom does this [2] And there is another plugin that just wraps the notebook to live inside of atom [3] [1] https://talkpython.fm/episodes/show/44/project-jupyter-and-ipython https://talkpython.fm/episodes/show/44/project-jupyter-and-i... [2] https://atom.io/packages/hydrogen https://atom.io/packages/hydrogen [3] https://github.com/jupyter/atom-notebook https://github.com/jupyter/atom-notebook

smortaz 10y ago

[msft] You are quite correct that the REPL/cell paradigm has its pluses & minuses. That's why the follow on (Jupyter Lab), is addressing many of these issues. Check out: https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab