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You can't self-host with Observable. For many, that means it's not a feasible replacement or improvement over an existing literate programming environment. It

by kowlo 6y ago

You can't self-host with Observable. For many, that means it's not a feasible replacement or improvement over an existing literate programming environment. It is a bit silly to downvote this for not being true, when it is factual.

j-pb 6y ago
Not true. The Observable runtime is open source, and trivial to integrate into your existing react/whatever webapp. There is also a vscode plugin that allows for live editing and rendering. It doesn't give you the ObservableHQ interface, but tbh I like working with files more. It also allows me to git everything. https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GordonSmith.observable-js https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GordonSm...
- kowlo 6y ago
  It is true. You can't self-host the same way you can self-host the Jupyter Notebook or Jupyter Lab environment. Or has that changed? Can I work on something offline without communicating with their servers?
  - j-pb 6y ago
    Check the link provided. It's just running inside of vscode, with no communication to their servers whatsoever.
    - kowlo 6y ago
      I did, it's not the same literate programming environment like I said. Are we misunderstanding each other?
      - j-pb 6y ago
        "You can't self-host with Observable." You can self host observble, but you can't self host observablehq. Literate programming just means the combination of code and documentation/visualisation. Observablehq provides a nice inline code editor, but that's incidental to what observable is. Git can also be used with a GUI but that GUI is not essential to what git is. Simularly observable notebooks can just as well be created without the GUI, in a quite convenient way.
        kowlo 6y ago
        I can see the ambiguity in what you've quoted, but it's clarified in the sentence that immediately follows it. It was referring to the "literate programming environment".
        j-pb 6y ago
        The definition of literate programming environment doesn't include the requirement of a GUI. Knuths original literate programming environment consisted of a command line tool to split files that mixed pascal and tex into the pascal and tex source, to be compiled separately. Which means that according to your definition, the original literate programming system, isn't literate programming.
        kowlo 6y ago
        I think you've steered this discussion away from the factual point that I made. All the best.
        j-pb 6y ago
        I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding the architecture, capabilities and relationships between observable and observablehq. Not having a button next to each cell to edit it in place, is not going to impact your productivity in any way, when you can just edit the cell in the window to the left. Wether it's below or left isn't a meaningful difference, and shouldn't have an impact on wether or not it's a suitable replacement or superior/inferior to other notebooks. Hope you'll look at it again in the future. In a sense it's your loss, so good luck and take care.
        what_is_this_98 6y ago
        it doesn't look like they've misunderstood anything, are you a shill or simply not reading anything? it's cringeworthy
- ParadiseEclipse 6y ago
  It sounds like you confirmed that it can't be self-hosted - are you sure about it not being true?
  - j-pb 6y ago
    Hosting the notebook and hosting the development environment are two different things. It's like saying git (observable) can't be self hosted because github (observablehq) is not open source.
    - kowlo 6y ago
      Just to jump in and say my comment that you said wasn't true was "... improvement over an existing literate programming environment.".
      - j-pb 6y ago
        I don't argue that you might find a different notebook environment more suitable. That's totally up to taste, preferences, and silly do argue about. But observable (the reactive notebook technology) can do everything a jupyter notebook can do, you just need to write a bit of communication code to hook up a websocket. (For me sandboxing the ui is a feature not a bug.) And you can also self host it on a machine of your choice, and edit it locally. We do that internally for all our dashboards.

by kowlo 6y ago

j-pb 6y ago

Not true. The Observable runtime is open source, and trivial to integrate into your existing react/whatever webapp. There is also a vscode plugin that allows for live editing and rendering. It doesn't give you the ObservableHQ interface, but tbh I like working with files more. It also allows me to git everything. https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GordonSmith.observable-js https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GordonSm...

kowlo 6y ago
It is true. You can't self-host the same way you can self-host the Jupyter Notebook or Jupyter Lab environment. Or has that changed? Can I work on something offline without communicating with their servers?
- j-pb 6y ago
  Check the link provided. It's just running inside of vscode, with no communication to their servers whatsoever.
  - kowlo 6y ago
    I did, it's not the same literate programming environment like I said. Are we misunderstanding each other?
    - j-pb 6y ago
      "You can't self-host with Observable." You can self host observble, but you can't self host observablehq. Literate programming just means the combination of code and documentation/visualisation. Observablehq provides a nice inline code editor, but that's incidental to what observable is. Git can also be used with a GUI but that GUI is not essential to what git is. Simularly observable notebooks can just as well be created without the GUI, in a quite convenient way.
      - kowlo 6y ago
        I can see the ambiguity in what you've quoted, but it's clarified in the sentence that immediately follows it. It was referring to the "literate programming environment".
        j-pb 6y ago
        The definition of literate programming environment doesn't include the requirement of a GUI. Knuths original literate programming environment consisted of a command line tool to split files that mixed pascal and tex into the pascal and tex source, to be compiled separately. Which means that according to your definition, the original literate programming system, isn't literate programming.
        kowlo 6y ago
        I think you've steered this discussion away from the factual point that I made. All the best.
        j-pb 6y ago
        I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding the architecture, capabilities and relationships between observable and observablehq. Not having a button next to each cell to edit it in place, is not going to impact your productivity in any way, when you can just edit the cell in the window to the left. Wether it's below or left isn't a meaningful difference, and shouldn't have an impact on wether or not it's a suitable replacement or superior/inferior to other notebooks. Hope you'll look at it again in the future. In a sense it's your loss, so good luck and take care.
        what_is_this_98 6y ago
        it doesn't look like they've misunderstood anything, are you a shill or simply not reading anything? it's cringeworthy
ParadiseEclipse 6y ago
It sounds like you confirmed that it can't be self-hosted - are you sure about it not being true?
- j-pb 6y ago
  Hosting the notebook and hosting the development environment are two different things. It's like saying git (observable) can't be self hosted because github (observablehq) is not open source.
  - kowlo 6y ago
    Just to jump in and say my comment that you said wasn't true was "... improvement over an existing literate programming environment.".
    - j-pb 6y ago
      I don't argue that you might find a different notebook environment more suitable. That's totally up to taste, preferences, and silly do argue about. But observable (the reactive notebook technology) can do everything a jupyter notebook can do, you just need to write a bit of communication code to hook up a websocket. (For me sandboxing the ui is a feature not a bug.) And you can also self host it on a machine of your choice, and edit it locally. We do that internally for all our dashboards.