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I disagree. While your points are valid for presentations, I believe that notebooks should first and foremost be used for exploratory computing. Notebooks are

I disagree. While your points are valid for presentations, I believe that notebooks should first and foremost be used for exploratory computing. Notebooks are my goto tool for whenever I need to do something with a computer and any of the following apply: * I'm not quite sure what or how. * It will likely be a one-off * I need it now. * Someone is watching me, to learn how I do it. I would go a step further and say that notebooks should probably not be shared directly most of the time, and that you should wrap up functionality into modules/packages for other people to use in their own notebooks. Edit: Just thought of a corny pun to make my point: They are notebooks, not textbooks. Notebooks are personal, and while it may be useful/insightful to compare notes, it's not the primary function of a notebook.

blueboo 8y ago
Indeed, when the alternative is the interpreter, the structure notebooks offer and the (loose) process they encourage makes for a vastly better solution for recording and capitalizing on your work.
bluejay2387 8y ago
I agree with with your disagreement. I've always approached notebooks as a prototyping tool first and a presentation tool second. I see Jupyter more as an example of an early Interactive programming tool that just happens to be useful for presentation and teaching purposes. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_programming) And regarding sharing -- particularly with notebooks you should be really cautious about sharing and opening them. The security model is not exactly bullet proof.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > I see Jupyter more as an example of an early Interactive programming tool Nitpick, but I hope you meant "young", not "early". Interactive programming is as old as (and today still primarily featured in) Lisp - i.e. twice as old as most of us here on HN.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
Agreed. I've been increasingly doing that at work with org-mode. Sometimes I'll just open up a source block under a TODO item, other times I'll create a new heading or a new file for some stream of thoughts mixed with code blocks in various languages. It feels better than doing it in a pure source code file, with my thoughts noted as comments (though I do plenty of that too).

blueboo 8y ago

Indeed, when the alternative is the interpreter, the structure notebooks offer and the (loose) process they encourage makes for a vastly better solution for recording and capitalizing on your work.

bluejay2387 8y ago

I agree with with your disagreement. I've always approached notebooks as a prototyping tool first and a presentation tool second. I see Jupyter more as an example of an early Interactive programming tool that just happens to be useful for presentation and teaching purposes. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_programming) And regarding sharing -- particularly with notebooks you should be really cautious about sharing and opening them. The security model is not exactly bullet proof.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> I see Jupyter more as an example of an early Interactive programming tool Nitpick, but I hope you meant "young", not "early". Interactive programming is as old as (and today still primarily featured in) Lisp - i.e. twice as old as most of us here on HN.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

Agreed. I've been increasingly doing that at work with org-mode. Sometimes I'll just open up a source block under a TODO item, other times I'll create a new heading or a new file for some stream of thoughts mixed with code blocks in various languages. It feels better than doing it in a pure source code file, with my thoughts noted as comments (though I do plenty of that too).