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Literate programming / ipython notebooks make me very uncomfortable. Primarily the problem is that it's a living body of mutable state -- like an Excel spreads

Literate programming / ipython notebooks make me very uncomfortable. Primarily the problem is that it's a living body of mutable state -- like an Excel spreadsheet, except it doesn't auto-update -- if I poke at some bit of it, and then re-evaluate a cell, some state will change, probably. And then maybe other cells' outputs will be invalid. Hmm, maybe I should re-evaluate the whole notebook? Oh, but some of the cells contain shell commands, for example to download a dictionary file from norvig.com. Do I want to do that? Maybe I should just undo the change I made. The ipynb is in git of course. But instead of a nice diff showing lines of code, the python code is held inside some JSON document. Ipython notebook is beautiful technology, the front-end is really-well done. But accumulating all that mutable state goes against all my instincts as a programmer. I prefer editing .py files in my text editor, with Make when necessary. And then creating output from input with a single, transient, execution.

abecedarius 9y ago
Is there a mode to rerun everything on every update? That's how my https://github.com/darius/halp https://github.com/darius/halp works, and it's fine for working out code with cheap test cases. You wouldn't want to do that for data analyses that take even a second, but I've found myself using it a lot to develop code.
emj 9y ago
Yes this is a problem when the notebooks grow, but where do you draw the line, the work flow Jupyter uses is perfect for exploratory coding, but it gets complicated quickly
- Myrmornis 9y ago
  Yes, to be honest I do much more programming than exploratory data analysis currently. FWIW, here's how I use it when I want to use Jupyter: - Write all my python code in .py files as usual. - The Jupyter notebook contains calls to functions generating graphical/HTML/etc output, nothing else. - Either use one of the various `reload*` functionalities to update the state of the persistent python process, or use `ipython console --existing` to create a conventional ipython shell sharing the same kernel as Jupyter and evaluate code in there.

abecedarius 9y ago

Is there a mode to rerun everything on every update? That's how my https://github.com/darius/halp https://github.com/darius/halp works, and it's fine for working out code with cheap test cases. You wouldn't want to do that for data analyses that take even a second, but I've found myself using it a lot to develop code.

emj 9y ago

Yes this is a problem when the notebooks grow, but where do you draw the line, the work flow Jupyter uses is perfect for exploratory coding, but it gets complicated quickly

Myrmornis 9y ago
Yes, to be honest I do much more programming than exploratory data analysis currently. FWIW, here's how I use it when I want to use Jupyter: - Write all my python code in .py files as usual. - The Jupyter notebook contains calls to functions generating graphical/HTML/etc output, nothing else. - Either use one of the various `reload*` functionalities to update the state of the persistent python process, or use `ipython console --existing` to create a conventional ipython shell sharing the same kernel as Jupyter and evaluate code in there.