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I have been using VSCode notebooks with .ipynb file extensions, this gives me many advantages as I am able to configure things I'm not able in JupyterLab. I als

I have been using VSCode notebooks with .ipynb file extensions, this gives me many advantages as I am able to configure things I'm not able in JupyterLab. I also have access to a very rich ecosystem of plugins. If there is anyone aware of VSCode as a solution but keeps using JupyterLab, could they explain why?

anvuong 3y ago
Maybe because the Jupyter is setup on the computing server, where everyone needs to log in to do their works? This was the case for my last 4 companies.
- rollinDyno 3y ago
  I see. If I faced the same constraint I would try to find whether VSCode can access files remotely, which is very likely.
  - arijun 3y ago
    The VSCode remote access is IMO better than just accessing files remotely; it’s s a large part of why I use it instead of Pycharm. It splits the editor into a UI that is run locally, and a server that does the heavy lifting on the remote machine. Conceptually it’s very similar to Jupiter, where you have a user facing front end with the UI run on JavaScript and rendered by your browser, and a python kernel backend, and the two communicate over pipes that can be run over the internet. What it effectively means for VSCode is that you get a more seamless experience than I experienced with Pycharm remote development.
- arijun 3y ago
  I use VSCode (with the remote extension) for the situation you’re describing, and find it works extremely well. There are a couple little pain points, but none related to the remote part of the equation. Big positives are how it integrates with the rest of the IDE so go to definition, debug cell, and data explorer just work. Some negatives are a possibly onerous setup if not already using VSCode as your IDE (to get some of the IDE-like stuff to work), and how there isn’t exact parity on hot keys so muscle memory fails you occasionally.
garbagecoder 3y ago
Only because I can use it anywhere that way, including on machines that I am not allowed to install things on. But if it works in vscode.dev then I am out of excuses, because you’re correct, it’s much much better in vscode.
babl-yc 3y ago
VSCode Jupyter notebooks + Github Copilot is my favorite way to interact with notebooks. The autocomplete is super helpful for assisting with discovery of matplotlib or numpy operations.
- fpgaminer 3y ago
  Yeah, I'm looking forward to Copilot chat for matplotlib stuff. Right now I have to wrangle Copilot to do what I want with comments, but with Chat you can just ask it to write the whole cell of code.
fumeux_fume 3y ago
For me it's a cleaner UI for experimentation and when you run a cell it doesn't jump to weird places depending on the output. I've been using jupyter for so long that I find it very familiar and easy to use. With that said, VSCode has improved so much for notebooks that I'll usually reach for it over jupyter.
- ImaCake 3y ago
  Ctrl+enter executes a vscode ipynb cell without jumping to the next cell. Although it doesn’t solve the issue of jumping when you re-run all cell’s with figures in your notebook.
wenc 3y ago
I too use VS Code as my Jupyter platform (running remotely on a powerful EC2 instance with 32 CPUs and 256GB RAM — my own desktop is a 7 year old Intel core i7 with 8GB RAM). VS Code’s Remote extension is amazing, works over any SSH host and seamlessly blends local and remote. It’s also fast since the UI is local while the filesystem and execution is remote. The experience is a lot better than JupyterLab (which I am forced to use from time to time on SageMaker). The VS Code UI is cleaner plus I get a full language server which means I can rename variables and refactor fearlessly. I also get full access to VS Code plugins.
- itairal 3y ago
  That sounds amazing. I am going to try this today. I have been irrational to the point of not trying this because I just love the notebook so much even though I love VS Code too. I imagine you just would never go back to notebooks. That is nice the company pays for all that cloud compute but for an individual it would just seem more practical to build a beast of a machine.
- kachnuv_ocasek 3y ago
  I'm curious about your setup as I might have to do something similar soon due to my machine's performance constraints. I understand you can connect to a Jupyter server remotely, but how do you sync your code? Do you have your Git repo cloned on the remote host and just run Git commands over SSH? Or does VS Code have some kind of integration for remote file systems with version control?
  - wenc 3y ago
    My code resides entirely on the remote EC2 instance while VS Code UI runs locally. There is no sync as such. You’re working off the remote copy via SSH. (I do back up my code periodically) VS code takes care of spinning up the remote Jupyter server. All I have to do is create a new .ipynb file and everything happens automatically. Execution and disk are remote, only the UI is local. This is the magic. It’s exactly like SSH except you have a rich client IDE in VS Code. The only data that moves over the network are your keystrokes and pastes and what is needed to display output in VS Code. You have to try it to see.
petemir 3y ago
I would love to use vs code for notebooks, but I just cannot get the interactive console to work as I would like. Right know I don’t exactly recall the problem, but it had to do with the keyboard shortcuts and running the piece of code in the interactive console. For some reason other shortcuts took precedence, even if I disabled them, so I couldn’t get my code to reliably run on the console.
- petemir 3y ago
  Well, I resetted my vs code environment in order to start fresh and check if my problem was still there. My issue is that VS Code interactive windows do not share the same "working space" as the cells. I usually use the interactive window to try stuff, which then gets crystallized in the notebooks. The interactive VS Code consoles are disjointed from the notebook, making it a pain to test stuff with already-defined variables and libraries.
bramathon 3y ago
I have tried VSCode many times, but I find the performance of the notebook UI to be terrible. It seems to be popular, so maybe it's just me. In any case, jupyterlab + jupyter-lsp gets most of the benefits for me.
- wenc 3y ago
  Would be curious how long ago you tried this and what your setup is? The lowest spec machine I have is a Windows 10 machine with an i7 and 8 GB RAM and it is super responsive on the latest version of VS Code.
  - bramathon 3y ago
    A few weeks ago with Ubuntu 22.04 on i7 with 16GB RAM. Perhaps it's related to using the devcontainer feature of VSCode, although I run jupyterlab in the same container
    - wenc 3y ago
      That might be it. I’m not sure about devcontainers (I don’t use them) but as a data point I dual boot into kubuntu on an 7 year old i7 with 8 gigs of RAM and there are no responsive issues.
specproc 3y ago
I've not been back to full-fledged Jupyter since getting in to VSCode. Most of my analytical work now is done in .py files, broken up into blocks with `#%%`. Real notebooks feel really clunky since adopting the approach.
- haberman 3y ago
  Does `#%%` have special meaning to the tooling? Are you able to view the output as a pseudo-notebook? EDIT: Googled and answered my own question. Here are docs describing the feature: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/python/jupyter-support-py https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/python/jupyter-support-py And a video demoing what you are describing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwN4-W1WR84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwN4-W1WR84
- wanderingmind 3y ago
  I wish more data scientists used light percent format notebooks `#%%`. It can be combined now with other powerful tools (linting, formatting and git) that is impossible with the `ipynb` format
  - nerdponx 3y ago
    I always like this better than true notebooks for a lot of purposes, but it's long overdue that we standardize on a format here. Knitr and RMarkdown never caught on, and Org Mode and VS Code both just do their own thing. It's a shame there isn't something more "portable".
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
  I must be missing something because I am not immediately seeing the value-add. Do you prefer the separation of input/output or is it something else. I believe all of the debug, extensions, and hinting work the same as the standard notebook.
  - specproc 3y ago
    I'm glad you asked, because you made me think about why. Initially, I guess I just thought it was kinda neat and stuck with it, but on reflection this is what I personally feel I get out of it: - Same interface for analysis, scripting, and building more complex multi-file pipelines. I can also use the #%% notation to break up and debug scripts, which is probably teaching me all sorts of bad habits but it's something I find helpful. - Similarly, as another commenter in this thread notes, .ipynbs just don't play as nicely with the other dev tools (e.g., Git, Black) and generally feel like second-class citizens in VSCode. - I much prefer having the VSCode interactive window on the right, as opposed to having my output dumped out below my code block. I now find using the classic notebook style makes the document much longer and harder to navigate, particularly as I work with text a lot and I'm often outputting large chunks of text for inspection. This noted, I think this is all possible because I'm rarely producing my final products in notebook format. Neither my boss nor the stakeholders I typically present to can (or have any inclination to) read code, so I don't really need a format others can execute or inspect. I just take the charts and figures and dump to presentations and other normie-friendly documents.
VirusNewbie 3y ago
VSCode interactive notebooks are amazing, I think that should be how it is for all environments. I only dabble with notebooks but I dream of the day I can easily have all of my functions be interactive in a REPL as I code them with VSCode.
bash-j 3y ago
Does anyone else have issues with the cells overlapping or shrinking in vscode? I've had this issue for months. Created an issue on GitHub, but there's been no improvements. It can be very frustrating, sometimes I have to completely close vscode and reopen to get it to stop glitching constantly. I tried switching the GPU to the nvidia card, but it somehow uses 30% of the GPU when a cell is running.
ImaCake 3y ago
I’ve tried to convince junior researchers to do make this jump in the past and they have not done so. I think its a combination of lack of time and familiarity. A lot of researchers only use jupyter notebooks occasionally between their more time intensive lab work or possibly using similar R tooling instead.

anvuong 3y ago

Maybe because the Jupyter is setup on the computing server, where everyone needs to log in to do their works? This was the case for my last 4 companies.

rollinDyno 3y ago
I see. If I faced the same constraint I would try to find whether VSCode can access files remotely, which is very likely.
- arijun 3y ago
  The VSCode remote access is IMO better than just accessing files remotely; it’s s a large part of why I use it instead of Pycharm. It splits the editor into a UI that is run locally, and a server that does the heavy lifting on the remote machine. Conceptually it’s very similar to Jupiter, where you have a user facing front end with the UI run on JavaScript and rendered by your browser, and a python kernel backend, and the two communicate over pipes that can be run over the internet. What it effectively means for VSCode is that you get a more seamless experience than I experienced with Pycharm remote development.
arijun 3y ago
I use VSCode (with the remote extension) for the situation you’re describing, and find it works extremely well. There are a couple little pain points, but none related to the remote part of the equation. Big positives are how it integrates with the rest of the IDE so go to definition, debug cell, and data explorer just work. Some negatives are a possibly onerous setup if not already using VSCode as your IDE (to get some of the IDE-like stuff to work), and how there isn’t exact parity on hot keys so muscle memory fails you occasionally.

garbagecoder 3y ago

Only because I can use it anywhere that way, including on machines that I am not allowed to install things on. But if it works in vscode.dev then I am out of excuses, because you’re correct, it’s much much better in vscode.

babl-yc 3y ago

VSCode Jupyter notebooks + Github Copilot is my favorite way to interact with notebooks. The autocomplete is super helpful for assisting with discovery of matplotlib or numpy operations.

fpgaminer 3y ago
Yeah, I'm looking forward to Copilot chat for matplotlib stuff. Right now I have to wrangle Copilot to do what I want with comments, but with Chat you can just ask it to write the whole cell of code.

fumeux_fume 3y ago

For me it's a cleaner UI for experimentation and when you run a cell it doesn't jump to weird places depending on the output. I've been using jupyter for so long that I find it very familiar and easy to use. With that said, VSCode has improved so much for notebooks that I'll usually reach for it over jupyter.

ImaCake 3y ago
Ctrl+enter executes a vscode ipynb cell without jumping to the next cell. Although it doesn’t solve the issue of jumping when you re-run all cell’s with figures in your notebook.

wenc 3y ago

I too use VS Code as my Jupyter platform (running remotely on a powerful EC2 instance with 32 CPUs and 256GB RAM — my own desktop is a 7 year old Intel core i7 with 8GB RAM). VS Code’s Remote extension is amazing, works over any SSH host and seamlessly blends local and remote. It’s also fast since the UI is local while the filesystem and execution is remote. The experience is a lot better than JupyterLab (which I am forced to use from time to time on SageMaker). The VS Code UI is cleaner plus I get a full language server which means I can rename variables and refactor fearlessly. I also get full access to VS Code plugins.

itairal 3y ago
That sounds amazing. I am going to try this today. I have been irrational to the point of not trying this because I just love the notebook so much even though I love VS Code too. I imagine you just would never go back to notebooks. That is nice the company pays for all that cloud compute but for an individual it would just seem more practical to build a beast of a machine.
kachnuv_ocasek 3y ago
I'm curious about your setup as I might have to do something similar soon due to my machine's performance constraints. I understand you can connect to a Jupyter server remotely, but how do you sync your code? Do you have your Git repo cloned on the remote host and just run Git commands over SSH? Or does VS Code have some kind of integration for remote file systems with version control?
- wenc 3y ago
  My code resides entirely on the remote EC2 instance while VS Code UI runs locally. There is no sync as such. You’re working off the remote copy via SSH. (I do back up my code periodically) VS code takes care of spinning up the remote Jupyter server. All I have to do is create a new .ipynb file and everything happens automatically. Execution and disk are remote, only the UI is local. This is the magic. It’s exactly like SSH except you have a rich client IDE in VS Code. The only data that moves over the network are your keystrokes and pastes and what is needed to display output in VS Code. You have to try it to see.

petemir 3y ago

I would love to use vs code for notebooks, but I just cannot get the interactive console to work as I would like. Right know I don’t exactly recall the problem, but it had to do with the keyboard shortcuts and running the piece of code in the interactive console. For some reason other shortcuts took precedence, even if I disabled them, so I couldn’t get my code to reliably run on the console.

petemir 3y ago
Well, I resetted my vs code environment in order to start fresh and check if my problem was still there. My issue is that VS Code interactive windows do not share the same "working space" as the cells. I usually use the interactive window to try stuff, which then gets crystallized in the notebooks. The interactive VS Code consoles are disjointed from the notebook, making it a pain to test stuff with already-defined variables and libraries.

bramathon 3y ago

I have tried VSCode many times, but I find the performance of the notebook UI to be terrible. It seems to be popular, so maybe it's just me. In any case, jupyterlab + jupyter-lsp gets most of the benefits for me.

wenc 3y ago
Would be curious how long ago you tried this and what your setup is? The lowest spec machine I have is a Windows 10 machine with an i7 and 8 GB RAM and it is super responsive on the latest version of VS Code.
- bramathon 3y ago
  A few weeks ago with Ubuntu 22.04 on i7 with 16GB RAM. Perhaps it's related to using the devcontainer feature of VSCode, although I run jupyterlab in the same container
  - wenc 3y ago
    That might be it. I’m not sure about devcontainers (I don’t use them) but as a data point I dual boot into kubuntu on an 7 year old i7 with 8 gigs of RAM and there are no responsive issues.

specproc 3y ago

I've not been back to full-fledged Jupyter since getting in to VSCode. Most of my analytical work now is done in .py files, broken up into blocks with `#%%`. Real notebooks feel really clunky since adopting the approach.

haberman 3y ago
Does `#%%` have special meaning to the tooling? Are you able to view the output as a pseudo-notebook? EDIT: Googled and answered my own question. Here are docs describing the feature: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/python/jupyter-support-py https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/python/jupyter-support-py And a video demoing what you are describing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwN4-W1WR84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwN4-W1WR84
wanderingmind 3y ago
I wish more data scientists used light percent format notebooks `#%%`. It can be combined now with other powerful tools (linting, formatting and git) that is impossible with the `ipynb` format
- nerdponx 3y ago
  I always like this better than true notebooks for a lot of purposes, but it's long overdue that we standardize on a format here. Knitr and RMarkdown never caught on, and Org Mode and VS Code both just do their own thing. It's a shame there isn't something more "portable".
0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
I must be missing something because I am not immediately seeing the value-add. Do you prefer the separation of input/output or is it something else. I believe all of the debug, extensions, and hinting work the same as the standard notebook.
- specproc 3y ago
  I'm glad you asked, because you made me think about why. Initially, I guess I just thought it was kinda neat and stuck with it, but on reflection this is what I personally feel I get out of it: - Same interface for analysis, scripting, and building more complex multi-file pipelines. I can also use the #%% notation to break up and debug scripts, which is probably teaching me all sorts of bad habits but it's something I find helpful. - Similarly, as another commenter in this thread notes, .ipynbs just don't play as nicely with the other dev tools (e.g., Git, Black) and generally feel like second-class citizens in VSCode. - I much prefer having the VSCode interactive window on the right, as opposed to having my output dumped out below my code block. I now find using the classic notebook style makes the document much longer and harder to navigate, particularly as I work with text a lot and I'm often outputting large chunks of text for inspection. This noted, I think this is all possible because I'm rarely producing my final products in notebook format. Neither my boss nor the stakeholders I typically present to can (or have any inclination to) read code, so I don't really need a format others can execute or inspect. I just take the charts and figures and dump to presentations and other normie-friendly documents.

VirusNewbie 3y ago

VSCode interactive notebooks are amazing, I think that should be how it is for all environments. I only dabble with notebooks but I dream of the day I can easily have all of my functions be interactive in a REPL as I code them with VSCode.

bash-j 3y ago

Does anyone else have issues with the cells overlapping or shrinking in vscode? I've had this issue for months. Created an issue on GitHub, but there's been no improvements. It can be very frustrating, sometimes I have to completely close vscode and reopen to get it to stop glitching constantly. I tried switching the GPU to the nvidia card, but it somehow uses 30% of the GPU when a cell is running.

ImaCake 3y ago

I’ve tried to convince junior researchers to do make this jump in the past and they have not done so. I think its a combination of lack of time and familiarity. A lot of researchers only use jupyter notebooks occasionally between their more time intensive lab work or possibly using similar R tooling instead.