yeah, but sometimes you want to execute snippet 12 4 times then using a variable derived from that go back to snippet 8 etc. notebooks are about non-linear exe

yeah, but sometimes you want to execute snippet 12 4 times then using a variable derived from that go back to snippet 8 etc. notebooks are about non-linear execution sure, there's enough rope to hang the whole neighborhood in that, you can totally f things up with no chance of recovery by doing that, or end up with data you have no idea how you got at and no way to re-trace 100% deterministically your steps but if you have some discipline, stick to read-only-wrt-db, and you just delete whole notebook when things stop making any sense, it's... magical to have all that power and freedom at you finger tips, without having to keep much stuff in your working memory since you can dump it in a var or cell anytime, and mix your text notes through the code too! It's not for everyone, but I love this beautiful chaos :)