Juptyer is just repackaged and remarketed IPython, python's command loop or REPL (read-eval-print-loop), with the important addition of the json notebook format

Juptyer is just repackaged and remarketed IPython, python's command loop or REPL (read-eval-print-loop), with the important addition of the json notebook format which saved and redisplayed the session all pretty. Wolfram's Mathematica had something like this since the 90s. Data scientists nee statisticians primarily need to play with data so a fast feedback loop is much preferred (as opposed to having to compile). Their end goal is a bunch of graphs which they publish to academia or present to management. Robust and modular code, which is the programmer's goal, is not really something they care about since once that paper's published, it's onto the next one.