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Isn't this readily solved by a user convention such as only updating one variable each cell? Why limit users based on mistakes they haven't made yet?

• phailhaus 5y ago
  User conventions don't work, because there is no mechanism for enforcement other than "hope they remember!" I would say most users don't even know about this convention, given I work in an environment where notebooks are used heavily and have never heard of this. Because these mistakes are allowed to happen silently, they will happen, and it will almost certainly make the code harder to manage. On top of that, Pyflow seems to rely on the user to define dependencies between blocks as well. This means that the user would have to both perfectly maintain the convention of one-variable-per-block, but also link every block that touches that variable going forward. Without ever making a mistake. It's such a well-defined graph problem that it's practically made for computers to handle, not fleshy people. This is why tools are so important: they can impose constraints that allow you to act more freely elsewhere. When I change a cell in Observable or add a reference, I don't have to think. The engine handles dependencies for me, without fail. I can't make an entire class of errors, which means I can just focus on functionality.