13 ms·

Show HN: A modern Jupyter client for macOS

611 points by jackhodkinson 2y ago

I love Jupyter – it's how I learned to code back when I was working as a scientist. But I was always frustrated that there wasn't a simple and elegant app that I could use with my Mac. I made do by wrapping JupyterLab in a chrome app, and then more recently switching to VS Code to make use of Copilot. I've always craved a more focused and lighter-weight experience when working in a notebook. That's why I created Satyrn. It starts up really fast (faster time-to-execution than VS Code or JupyterLab), you can launch notebooks right from the Finder, and the design is super minimalist. It's got an OpenAI integration (use your own API key) for multi-cell generation with your notebook as context (I'll add other LLMs soon). And many more useful features like a virtual environment management UI, Black code formatting, and easy image/table copy buttons. Full disclosure: it's built with Electron. I originally wrote it in Swift but couldn't get the editor experience to where I wanted it. Now it supports autocomplete, multi-cursor editing, and moving the cursor between cells just like you'd expect from JupyterLab or VS Code. Satyrn sits on top of the jupyter-server, so it works with all your existing python kernels, Jupyter configuration, and ipynb files. It only works with local files at the moment, but I'm planning to extend it to support remote servers as well. I'm an indie developer, and I will try to monetize at some point, but it's free while in alpha. If you're interested, please try it out! I'd love your feedback in the comments, or you can contact me at jack-at-satyrn-dot-app.

jackhodkinson 2y ago
Thanks for checking out my project. I'd love your feedback in the comments. I'm not sure if the post text above is visible (I can't see it on my phone's HN reader) so I'm going to repost it here as a comment too: I love Jupyter – it's how I learned to code back when I was working as a scientist. But I was always frustrated that there wasn't a simple and elegant app that I could use with my Mac. I made do by wrapping JupyterLab in a chrome app, and then more recently switching to VS Code to make use of Copilot. I've always craved a more focused and lighter-weight experience when working in a notebook. That's why I created Satyrn. It starts up really fast (faster time-to-execution than VS Code or JupyterLab), you can launch notebooks right from the Finder, and the design is super minimalist. It's got an OpenAI integration (use your own API key) for multi-cell generation with your notebook as context (I'll add other LLMs soon). And many more useful features like a virtual environment management UI, Black code formatting, and easy image/table copy buttons. Full disclosure: it's built with Electron. I originally wrote it in Swift but couldn't get the editor experience to where I wanted it. Now it supports autocomplete, multi-cursor editing, and moving the cursor between cells just like you'd expect from JupyterLab or VS Code. Satyrn sits on top of the jupyter-server, so it works with all your existing python kernels, Jupyter configuration, and ipynb files. It only works with local files at the moment, but I'm planning to extend it to support remote servers as well. I'm an indie developer, and I will try to monetize at some point, but it's free while in alpha. If you're interested, please try it out! I'd love your feedback in the comments, or you can contact me at jack-at-satyrn-dot-app.
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pbronez 2y ago
Cool! Surprised to hear you started with a native UI and pivoted to electron. What was the major blocker there? I recently got frustrated with OpenSCAD and decided to try CadQuery and Build123d. The modeling backend is a big step forward, but the GUI is not nearly as good as OpenSCAD. I managed to get it working via VSCode with a plugin, but I’m dreaming of embedding everything in a dedicated MacOS app so I can jump into CAD work without hacking through dev setup.
- jackhodkinson 2y ago
  There aren't many great production-ready open-source frameworks for code-editor components in Swift. I assessed quite a few but found that the feature completeness was far from what I needed. I tried to fork [CodeEditSourceEditor](https://github.com/CodeEditApp/CodeEditSourceEditor https://github.com/CodeEditApp/CodeEditSourceEditor) and add the extra features I wanted, but I think it would have taken me 6-12 months to get it to an acceptable state, meanwhile not spending any time focusing on the rest of the product experience. I decided to play around with Typescript and Electron over a weekend and ended up getting a really solid prototype so I made the heart wrenching decision to move over. I'm messing around with writing my own text editor component in Swift now, but it's quite a big endeavour to get the standard expected for a production ready product. I'm assuming a pure-swift CAD UI would be equally difficult. Would be really cool to see that tho.
  - rjurney 2y ago
    Don't listen to the grinches that stole Swift. Electron is fine. We have lots of RAM. Just make it good. Data scientists won't care.
  - cageface 2y ago
    FWIW I've had good experiences with Tauri so far. It's great being able to call back easily into Rust code and I haven't had any real issues with the wrapped web view. At this point I'd start with Tauri first and only switch to Electron only if I really need something only Chrome supports or if I need to support Linux. I guess the webview story there is not so good.
yboris 2y ago
I hope you consider an open source model: code available freely on GitHub & app available for purchase on your website. I was scared about doing it this way, but it worked out for me: https://videohubapp.com/ https://videohubapp.com/ for pay-what-you-want-$5-minimum for my app, and https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App git-clone-and-build for the code. I currently sell about 60 copies per month (same average across the last 4 years too).
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- breck 2y ago
  > pay-what-you-want-$5-minimum for my app > I currently sell about 60 copies per month (same average across the last 4 years too). I'm guessing the median is $5, can you share what the average is?
  - Y_Y 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - ayhanfuat 2y ago
      No. If majority is paying 5 when the minimum is 5, the median is also 5. The rest can still be paying more than 5 which would yield a higher mean.
      - Y_Y 2y ago
        (edit: remove nonsense)
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      - crazygringo 2y ago
        Even simpler -- if the majority is paying 5, the median is 5 period.
phromo 2y ago
Alternatives and innovation in this space are greatly appreciated! I run Linux and Windows so I keep my eyes fixed on https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/12062#issuecomment-2131469004 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/12062#issuecommen... - - zed is a cross platform, gpu rendered, rust-based editor.. Jupyter support should arrive soonish
- ayhanfuat 2y ago
  nteract (https://nteract.io/ https://nteract.io/) supports windows and linux.
  - phromo 2y ago
    I still use Atom+Hydrogen most days.. About the same amount of years since the last (major) updates as nteract. https://github.com/nteract/hydrogen https://github.com/nteract/hydrogen
- jackhodkinson 2y ago
  That contribution to Zed from rgbkrk looks awesome.
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cheptsov 2y ago
Can I use it to connect to a remote Jupyter notebook server?
- jackhodkinson 2y ago
  Not yet! But I'm working on this :)
  - googletron 2y ago
    This is the feature, I want.
  - cheptsov 2y ago
    That will be interesting. Happy to test and share feedback. Previously, I was a part of the DataSpell and PyCharm team building notebook support. Now working with dstack, where we support dev environments and super interested in remote support.
    - jackhodkinson 2y ago
      Thanks! I'll let you know when it's ready. What do you use now to work with remote environments? JupyterLab or VS Code?
      - cheptsov 2y ago
        Right now, mostly VSCode - mainly because it’s a desktop IDE and it also supports notebooks.
      - kernelsanderz 2y ago
        I use jupyterlab via an SSH tunnel
      - singhrac 2y ago
        We use a self-hosted JupyterLab. I would love to have an external tool though our existing workflow isn’t too bad.
Halan 2y ago
The reason people use an actual IDE instead of Jupyter web is because it allows you to jump in the libraries source code
- jackhodkinson 2y ago
  Agreed, that's a big one. I'd love to add that capability to Satyrn too.
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ibash 2y ago
Thank you for attempting to use swift first. Electron apps are bloated and overused. Excited to play around with this!
- jackhodkinson 2y ago
  I agree! At the very least I can port this to Tauri to make it have a smaller footprint.
  - mritchie712 2y ago
    Might be some useful things you can do with the Tauri rust backend too
  - yboris 2y ago
    Since your app is currently Electron I'm surprised it doesn't work with Windows. Would it be hard to get the app to play nicely with Windows?
- dmazzoni 2y ago
  Agreed about Electron apps! But...a really good code editor is a good example of something that's extremely hard to implement using native text controls, but there are great ones based on web tech. I wonder if embedding system WebKit on macOS or using something like NeutralinoJS would be a good alternative? The pro is your app is much smaller and lighter. The con is that any bugs in your system web control are out of your control, and certain tight integration with web APIs might not be possible.
- Vegenoid 2y ago
  From the post: > Full disclosure: it's built with Electron. I originally wrote it in Swift but couldn't get the editor experience to where I wanted it. Now it supports autocomplete, multi-cursor editing, and moving the cursor between cells just like you'd expect from JupyterLab or VS Code. Consider taking this as evidence that Electron isn't bad, instead of evidence that you shouldn't use this program.
- xenator 2y ago
magnio 2y ago
To be frank, I don't see any additional features of the app over VSCode, other than it starts up faster, which does not matter much as VSCode starts up faster than the import cell of any notebooks I have. Also, one big reason I use VSCode for notebook is to get the Python LSP. Good luck to you though, I do think the demographics of scientists who find VSCode confusing is actually sizeable.
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- fastball 2y ago
  I have VSCode open 24/7 so even that feature doesn't help me.
- rjurney 2y ago
  Lots of people use both VSCode and native Jupyter notebooks that would love this app as it develops.
- nxpnsv 2y ago
  But if you aren't using VSCode (we exist) this looks quite useful. That said, I just open my jupyter sessions in firefox and am pretty happy with that...
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  Mental separation, I think. It's nice to take a break from the code editor and have a focused app for quick analysis, like a calculator.
asdf_snar 2y ago
I use Jupyter Lab every day on OSX in scientific/academic work, so I feel I am your target audience. In case it helps you gauge my impression, I spent about two minutes reading the post and scrolling through the website. I feel I did not understand the main advantages of this notebook aside from the AI integration. I don't understand how "start-up" time is a cost; I have a Jupyter server running at all times and use it as a scratch-pad throughout the day, so it is always available. I don't understand the "modern command palette". As far as I can tell all the commands are available to regular Jupyter Labs, and either way I always use hotkeys for them. The code formatting using black isn't bad, but notebooks are for scratchy ideas, not real code. If I'm at the point of formatting code, it's going in an actual IDE. I'd even argue providing formatting inside of a notebook encourages bad habits for scientists, who prefer to stay entirely within a notebook, but are then sometimes unable to reproduce their results. I don't see the advantage of the copy-paste; I can copy paste directly from Labs to Slack/online editing pages, and certain Latex typesetters. Pros: it looks pretty, the site has nice demo videos (in terms of quality; I didn't understand the content). I want to like this but I don't see any benefits for a power user except for the AI integration; if AI is the only selling point then I prefer to get it differently.
- jackhodkinson 2y ago
  Thanks for your feedback! If you'd be happy to share: I'm curious to know what scientific field you work in? Do you do 100% computational work, or is it a mixture of experimental and computational?
  - asdf_snar 2y ago
    Sure. I do algorithm development at a biotech company, it is 100% computational work. I am not a software developer by training, my background is in mathematics.
- ayhanfuat 2y ago
  I also use notebooks and qtconsole daily so I'd like to chime in. - I don't have a continuously running notebook server. I start it when I need to and shut it down if I won't be working with it for a while. I do like the idea of clicking an icon and starting an app. - Modern command palette, I believe, is similar to what you would see in apps like VS code. It doesn't offer more commands but instead make it easier to find and execute commands. I don't use Jupyter Lab so I don't know if it has a command palette but Jupyter Notebook doesn't so that seems like an advantage to me. - I disagree on the formatting point, too. Even if I am just doing something very quick I cannot stand seeing lines extending some length, no space after a colon, single vs double quote inconsistency etc. So I do spend time formatting them even if I am on IDLE and know for sure I am not going to save it. Thankfully, IPython added support for Black so it is less of an issue for me. Apps in this area generally focused on extending Jupyter to maybe combine SQL/JS with Python, making data exploration easier but I do appreciate a light app that just gives me a notebook experience with some small advantages, especially considering Classic Notebook is going to go away soon. I'll definitely give it a try.
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oli5679 2y ago
I use notebooks the whole time, normally in vs-code and with github copilot setup. I found it quite painful to point it to a couple of environments I have, and confusing how i get it pointing to my gpt4 api keys. Once I did these two I was not sure how to prompt rather than typing a command. Good luck with this, don't mean this in a critical way, just trying to give some feedback of what I think when I first try it.
- rahimnathwani 2y ago
  I also edit my notebooks in vscode. I wouldn't switch to something that doesn't support GitHub copilot, unless completions are much better.
  - jackhodkinson 2y ago
    Thanks for your feedback! I'm looking into this. I'd also really like copilot here.
- jackhodkinson 2y ago
  I'll work on making them easier to configure. At the moment you press `g` (for generate) while in command-mode to create a "prompt cell". I'll think of ways to make this more obvious. Appreciate you spending the time to try it out and share your feedback.
- rhodysurf 2y ago
  Yeah vscode also finds the virtualenv from the current project automatically whihc is probably the biggest thing for me that stops me for using this, alongside copilot support
tomwphillips 2y ago
Why “modern”? I suggest you use more descriptive adjectives.
- s3p 2y ago
  I think the approach is a Mac-first app that follows Apple's design language, no?
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    Yup, that's what "modern" means to me in this context. Thought it was totally clear. It looks like and acts like it was built for Sonoma, not for Sierra.
    - tomwphillips 2y ago
      That didn’t occur to me. As an IPython/Jupyter user for over a decade and Mac user for two decades, it’s not something I personally care about or an issue I’ve felt.
      - crazygringo 2y ago
        Well sure, plenty of users don't care about aesthetics. And the Jupyter notebook interface certainly isn't aesthetically pleasing. Colab is not as bad, but it's still not nice. But some people do care about aesthetics, and this interface is actually aesthetically pleasing.
- aflag 2y ago
  I always felt that if you have nothing to say about your project you say it's modern. They just coded it, so it must be
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BaculumMeumEst 2y ago
Dude I just started getting into deep learning and have been flabbergasted getting stuff working. I installed jupyter and torch via homebrew. I can use torch fine from programs, or in venvs, but when I try to use torch in a Jupyter notebook it cannot find the module. Is it a different python environment or something?
- nickvazz 2y ago
  Hey, I used to run into the same issue and figured out installing conda, and utilizing its python was the easiest to keep things straight. Once you install conda and can activate your environment, then when using pip, don’t just call `pip install` because your path could be using a different pip than you expect. Instead use `python -m pip install` after activating your conda environment but make sure you’re using the right Python (`which python` & `conda env list`)
- adammarples 2y ago
  Python packaging etc can be a real pain point. I would suggest not using homebrew for these, in fact uninstall them. For jupiter/torch heavy work, I would install anaconda and then use that exclusively. Best of luck, it can be annoying but follow a good guide online you'll be OK.
- jackhodkinson 2y ago
  It can be confusing. The key is that you probably have multiple versions of python installed on your computer (that's normal). Secondly, the default "kernel" in Jupyter was probably not the one you used to install torch. I'd suggest 2 things to help: 1. Try `pyenv` for python version management 2. See this tutorial for how to create a virtual environment and add it as a Jupyter kernel: https://selvamsubbiah.com/run-jupyter-notebook-in-a-virtual-environment/ https://selvamsubbiah.com/run-jupyter-notebook-in-a-virtual-... Satyrn makes it easier to add virtual environments as a kernel, but you still will need to create the virtual environment and install torch there yourself. That's a really great point you made about how confusing it is to pip install stuff with `!pip` when working in the notebook. Right now Satyrn does not support the `!` commands, but I will add this soon and try to make it so `!pip` works with the expected virtual environment you are working with.
29athrowaway 2y ago
Does it work with Sagemath?
- jackhodkinson 2y ago
  Is this it? https://www.sagemath.org/ https://www.sagemath.org/ This looks like a programming language built on top of Python. Satyrn only supports the Python programming language right now. If you are using this on the regular, I'm curious if you have tried Julia or Mathematica, if so why do you use Sagemath over those alternatives?
  - 29athrowaway 2y ago
    There are many reasons to use Sagemath. It unifies multiple existing open source math libraries and packages. It integrates with Octave, Scilab, Maxima, etc. It also integrates well with LaTeX... you can take results, format them as TeX and also render them. Its objective is to be a replacement for Maple, Mathematica and MATLAB, which are prohibitively expensive for many people. As such, once it's installed it comes with batteries included and you can easily share workbooks that others can run without falling into a DevOps-like situation. The DSL that is offers can be more convenient than Python. There are some interesting quickstart tutorials here https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/prep/quickstart.html https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/prep/quickstart.html And it was also discussed earlier on HN here, with many comments that are more informed than anything I could say at this moment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23511183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23511183 I tried JetBrains DataSpell as a desktop frontend for Sage and the results were not good.
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
    > If you are using this on the regular, I'm curious if you have tried Julia or Mathematica, if so why do you use Sagemath over those alternatives? Sagemath has pure math stuff. Julia does not. Sagemath can do lots of cool symbolic calculations like rings, quotient rings, algebraic curves, etc. Mathematica has some of this functionality but it's not free.
twarge 2y ago
This sort of high performance minimalism is precisely what makes the Mac app ecosystem great. Not because you can't write the same thing on other platforms, but because everyone who cares about it has condensed on the Mac platform. Would love to see this adopt the document-based app API and the toolbar API.
- behnamoh 2y ago
  > This sort of high performance minimalism is precisely what makes the Mac app ecosystem great. Not because you can't write the same thing on other platforms, but because everyone who cares about it has condensed on the Mac platform. Meh. Most apps like this are built for the Mac because a lot of programmers use Macs. If anything, Apple makes it difficult to develop for macOS because they keep breaking APIs with each update.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    Pretty sure that’s what they’re saying
    - behnamoh 2y ago
      Pretty sure that's not what they're saying.
  - samatman 2y ago
    > Most apps like this are built for the Mac because People with Macs have money, and are willing to use it to pay for software. Not that deep.
  - azinman2 2y ago
    > Apple makes it difficult to develop for macOS because they keep breaking APIs with each update. Like what
    - newaccount74 2y ago
      Every macOS release breaks a few things, but to be honest it's not much of an issue. Here are some recent things that required code changes from developers: - disabling user interaction when trying to request items from the keychain - views no longer clipping to bounds by default - installing login items and background services The latter two were understandable, because they were caused by new features, but some are just caused by a lack of testing. It's not a big deal, and I'm sure Electron apps have similar issues, but app developers do have to put in some work to make sure their apps keep working properly on macOS.
dsp_person 2y ago
Anyone else live in a Jupyter QtConsole?
- flippant 2y ago
  Thank you. I didn't know this existed. https://qtconsole.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ https://qtconsole.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  Yes, I have it set up to launch at OS startup, along with a hotkey to task-switch to it at any time. An incredibly underrated tool. JupyterLab still has its uses, but it's just too heavyweight for the "calculator replacement" role IMO. QtConsole is perfect. Or at least, it is with a bit of additional startup code.
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- BiteCode_dev 2y ago
  Yes, very underrated tool.
blindriver 2y ago
Can someone explain their views on Jupyter notebooks? As far as I can tell, the instructor/content creators will set up the "notebook" and students can read the notes and click on the "play" button to see it work in action. Is there anything else besides that? I guess I'm old school and am used to cutting and pasting and running things in my own terminal, so I'm wondering if there are added benefits that I'm not aware of of Jupyter notebooks. It seems to have a very loyal following so I would love to learn their perspective!
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- dijit 2y ago
  Really good for doing some basic data science, the kind of thing where you want some graphs based on some source data that is variable. Being able to change functions around and generate new graphs (IE; if I want the mean not the median for a contrived example) is really handy.
- adobrawy 2y ago
  Data science / ML are using that. Databricks (data platform, data warehouse) have support to run notebooks in workflows on periodic basis. There is market of professional use of them.
- ericjmorey 2y ago
  You can also edit the notebook, both code blocks and text. It's used for quick visual iterative exploration of datasets with descriptions. The focus is on creating a report of your analysis and process rather than a "product".
- jackhodkinson 2y ago
  When I learned to program I was working as a scientist. I was relying on OriginLab (a scientific version of Excel) for my data analysis and it was a real pain. I decided to start using python for analysis and plotting and started with scripts and terminal interactivity, but found it too clunky. Jupyter feels more interactive when you are working with data because you need to explore the data and experiment with data manipulation in a way I found quite natural to do in a notebook. Since then I've moved into software development where I rely on my IDE for any coding that involves working with more than a few modules. And as I got better working with an IDE I did gravitate toward making a script for certain kinds of tasks where I use to reach for a notebook, but there are still many data analysis tasks that I would much prefer a notebook for. It's also quite nice to share a notebook with someone to show them how you arrived at your conclusions, and it's nice for them to be able to take your analysis and modify it or test their own ideas on top of yours. Obviously the notebooks are not great for collaboration without some fiddling around with git, but they are still very good for this kind of collaboration.
fnoof 2y ago
How does this compare to the “official” Jupyter desktop app: https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab-desktop https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab-desktop
- dijit 2y ago
  Looks like a native app vs an Electron app.
  - ashvardanian 2y ago
    Both are web apps sadly.
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- nerdponx 2y ago
  My question as well. My experience using notebooks with 3rd party Jupyter clients has been poor, eg Nteract and Pycharm. Whereas Jupyterlab Desktop just works. You would have to convince me to switch to anything else.
- croemer 2y ago
  It's closed source
rrr_oh_man 2y ago
I’m still hoping for something that is at least 80% as functional and integrated as RStudio is for R.
- Affric 2y ago
  Have you had a look at Quarto? Any thoughts?
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- phyalow 2y ago
  its called running and editing notebooks with vscode...
ylluminate 2y ago
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dkga 2y ago
Congrats! Sorry if you shared here below and I missed it, but I'd love to hear what exactly didn't work out with a pure Swift approach. I'm trying that route for a SQL client based on duckdb (as a side project) and would be very helpful to avoid similar pitfalls for example.
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- jackhodkinson 2y ago
  Awesome! I did some explaining in this comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40899748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40899748 Good luck with your project. Let me know if you'd like any tips on the code editor stuff or anything else I can help with.
  - dkga 2y ago
    Great, many thanks! And yes, I hope to have something to share in some ~12 months time. The goal ie to be essentially an SQL client that (a) benefits from ducker's excellent performance and flexible SQL language, and (b) has data-science-helpful features, like the ability to filter or reorder columns with the mouse (or keyboard) afeter the data is queries.
madjam002 2y ago
Is there something like Jupyter for Javascript/Typescript, ideally self hosted? At the moment I just do data science using one off scripts in NodeJS but seeing these notebook style formats recently where different chunks of code appear to be snapshotted and then visualisations can be easily integrated looks quite nice.
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- __natty__ 2y ago
  Yes. You can use Jupyter notebooks with both JavaScript and TypeScript. Such support is from Deno for example [0] [0] https://deno.com/blog/v1.37 https://deno.com/blog/v1.37
- mrbombastic 2y ago
  You might want to check out Observable - not sure about self hosting but js based and has notebooks with inline plots and all that jazz. https://observablehq.com/documentation/notebooks/ https://observablehq.com/documentation/notebooks/
- leonseled 2y ago
  Not exactly a notebook but Quokka gives you that REPL playground experience.
- nichochar 2y ago
  We are building one right now. It's very early and we have only "soft launched", but you can check it out here. https://github.com/srcbookdev/srcbook https://github.com/srcbookdev/srcbook
wenc 2y ago
I used to use Jupyter and Jupyter Lab, but by far the most able Jupyter interface today is actually VS Code (I use this every day). The interface is sleek, the language server and debugger are built in (so completions, variable renaming, step-by-step debugging etc. all work seamlessly) and it makes Jupyter a pleasure to use.
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gcr 2y ago
Nice! Is this loading the same webpage whatever JupyterLab is serving or did you write the JavaScript machinery for cell management etc yourself? If the latter, are interactive plotly graphs or IPython widgets on your radar?
- jackhodkinson 2y ago
  Thank you :) I did write the entire client. I will add support for those soon! I love interactive widgets.
bambam24 2y ago
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threwaway4392 2y ago
For vim users, jupyter-vim [0] coupled with a jupyter QtConsole is hard to beat. The short video [1] is maybe self-explanatory, but in short: - vim on the left half of the screen, a jupyter QtConsole on the right, showing any plots, possibly interactive. - the kernel on the jupyter QtConsole can be running on a powerful remote host, e.g., with GPU, but the plots are displayed locally - Focused window is always vim. From vim editing a .py and without ever leaving vim or touching the mouse, one connects once to the jupyter kernel of the QtConsole. Then one can send a selection of lines, or vim text objects, to be evaluated in the QtConsole with a few keystrokes. Code is shown+evaluated and plots are displayed in the QtConsole as if the code sent from vim had been typed there. One gets the full power of both vim and jupyter kernels with native plots. No more browser based notebooks or other editors with half-baked vim bindings. [0]: https://github.com/jupyter-vim/jupyter-vim https://github.com/jupyter-vim/jupyter-vim [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h59cbg4HqpY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h59cbg4HqpY
- abdullahkhalids 2y ago
  Or you could use emacs and have the images displayed inline.
  - arjvik 2y ago
    ...and you just triggered a holy war :)
- dsp_person 2y ago
  The ability to send code to a Jupyter kernel is pretty sweet. I made a python script that starts a kernel in the background that you can pipe commands to/from in your shell, or even open a QtConsole with the current state. https://github.com/digitalsignalperson/comma-python https://github.com/digitalsignalperson/comma-python
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ashu1461 2y ago
What were your initial thoughts on tradeoffs on making this a vs code extension vs a separate app ?
- fredoliveira 2y ago
  The post is literally right here. > I've always craved a more focused and lighter-weight experience when working in a notebook. That's why I created Satyrn. > It starts up really fast (faster time-to-execution than VS Code or JupyterLab)
  - floam 2y ago
    He did not answer the question in your quote.
uptownfunk 2y ago
I just want a Python version of rstudio- I bet they probably support Python by now
- wch 2y ago
  You should check out Positron, which is currently beta. It's created by Posit (the company formerly known as RStudio). https://github.com/posit-dev/positron https://github.com/posit-dev/positron
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nothrowaways 2y ago
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omerhac 2y ago
Great app. A good example why js apps can never be more than OK, and native apps can really rock. Would be amazing if I could use my sublime bindings here
- speedgoose 2y ago
  > it's built with Electron
benrutter 2y ago
This looks great! Since jupyter notebooks are used by a lot of people (like scientists, business analysts etc) I think there's a genuine niche for just having a jupyter notebook client for folks to get started with quickly. Adding something like built in .venv support and even python distribution would be immense (I'm thinking of a dream scenario where installing something like this gives a beginner all the tools to get up and running python notebooks with) any plans for that on the roadmap?
- jackhodkinson 2y ago
  Even as a command line power user, I still wish it were easier to install dependencies while working in a notebook. If I'm working on a project I don't want to have to switch to my terminal if I can solve the problem in one command from my notebook. With a little careful thought into good UX I don't see why it can't be easy for a beginner at the same time useful to a pro user (and still compatible with any virtual environment).
- entangled_atom 2y ago
  Totally agree with this sentiment. There is definite value in providing an easy to setup fully featured jupyter environment for people who are just starting out. The company I work at (qBraid) has a qBraid Lab product that does exactly this, but tailored more toward those in the quantum computing ecosystem. We may even be interested in offering Satyrn as another option on our currently platform alongside VSCode and standard Jupyter, if the creator(s) are ever interested in licensing and/or some form of co-selling model.
vanshk7 2y ago
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keepamovin 2y ago
I love your website design! How did you put that together? What did you use for the app screenshots and logo graphics? Is your project related to these two other "Satyrn"s ?? Satyrn: A Notebook alternative that supports branching code and local collaboration. https://github.com/CharlesAverill/satyrn https://github.com/CharlesAverill/satyrn Satyrn: A Platform for Analytics Augmented Generation https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.12069 https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.12069
- jackhodkinson 2y ago
  Thanks! I just used the builtin MacOS screenshot tool to take the screenshots. I used Tailwind to style the page. I really like the default shadow that the "selected window" screenshot adds, but since there are also "selected area" screenshots I decided to take them without the default shadow (by holding option) and then add it in using Tailwind. The logo was done with ChatGPT and my friend editing it with some graphic design software :) This project is unrelated to those others. I like the branching code idea tho, would love to have something like that. I'd love it if you could rewind your code execution to a point in time and then play it forward differently. I suppose that would be a pretty big memory overhead tho.
croemer 2y ago
I'm a bit disappointed the code isn't available. I scrolled the landing page for a long time to find the Github button as I strongly expected something that was highly upvoted on hackernews was open source.
wiihack 2y ago
Looks great! :)
alisiddiq 2y ago
My biggest issue with Jupyter is the key bindings, I want to be able to import my Jetbrains keybindings to Jupyter notebooks but havent found a good way. The Jupyter implementation in Pycharm is just terrible so still stuck using jupyter in the browser. Will your tool allow custom key bindings?
- senand 2y ago
  Isn't this better if you use DataSpell from Jetbrains instead of Pycharm?
  - pocketsand 2y ago
    My experience with DataSpell has not been great. Granted, my workflow leans toward R, and it DataSpell has a Python-first approach, but the app was basically completely broken to even load R, and StackOverflow was full of relatively old posts of people with the same problem. If they really cared about that app that would never happen. I just do a lot of my R editing in PyCharm now and flip between terminals and RStudio. I was hoping DataSpell could unify that, but it's not ready. The new RStudio IDE is promising, however.
hpen 2y ago
Anybody interested in a Jupyter notebook like experience for Swift and iOS development ML / data science algorithms. Think write on macOS but run on an actual device but send data back to the host and draw charts, etc. Like run computer vision alogirhtms your developing on actual hardware, cameras, etc but with notebook like cells on macOS
spott 2y ago
So, it looks like if you try and add a kernel for a virtualenv that doesn't have ipykernel installed you immediately install it in the virtualenv with `pip` It would be great if you asked the user before doing this. My environments are usually managed by one of poetry or pipenv or nix, not pip. Which means now my lock files and installed stuff is out of sync.
- jackhodkinson 2y ago
  Great feedback, thank you. I've heard this before. I'm thinking of keeping the default but adding an option in settings to "ask before installation" for users who prefer that behaviour (similar to VS Code).
  - spott 2y ago
    Maybe the first time it happens you pop up with a confirmation dialog and it has a checkbox that says something like “always ask” (and an option in the settings).
mritchie712 2y ago
This is great. I've wanted to build something similar many times, but like you've mentioned, it's tricky to monetize. Feature request: If I drag a tabular file (e.g. CSV, parquet, etc.) into the UI, do something like: temp1 = pd.read_csv('path_to_file') temp1.head() Good luck with it!
- jackhodkinson 2y ago
  Thanks! That's a great idea. I have been thinking of doing something like this.
JBGruber 2y ago
A bit off topic, sorry, but: Jupyter is bad for research. The ability to run code out of order, but then save the output, is confusing for the one doing the research and everybody who wants to reproduce it. I don't understand why the decision was made for Jupyter to combine the source code of a notebook and the output. Things like Quarto keep both separate, as essentially all programming languages inteded, while providing an easy-to-use implementation of literate programming.
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- PheonixPharts 2y ago
  This can be solved by just running "restart and re-run all" as a matter of habit whenever you feel like you are in a good state. If you're looking at someone else's notebook, this should also be your first step. If you're using Python, Jupyter still offers a major advantage for sharing prototyping/research work in that it it is the only real way to provide literate programming. There are cases where code inside of a notebook should be pulled into a library, but pure code will always be inferior when most of your work is expository and exploratory. Literate Haskell, and R Markdown are superior forms of literate programming, but Jupyter is not terrible if you just take some basic precautions before sharing. Notebooks work great as... notebooks. Which is primarily how they're used in my experience. When the bulk of your work is prototyping and and exploring an idea, they're still an excellent choice.
  - JBGruber 2y ago
    Quarto is like R Markdown, but it supports the jupyter kernel, so Python support is essentially the same as jupyter notebooks. But the good practices are built in, instead of you having to remember running "restart and re-run all". So it's a valid option for literate programming in Python (and several other languages). When I say "confusing", I don't mean I don't understand it. I mean that while using it, there is a higher than zero chance that you get confused at some point and mess up. I love the feature that you can interactivly develop/prototype research. I just think better/less error-prone tools are available (which also track nicer on git btw, since quarto docs are flat text files).
p5v 2y ago
I am sorry, but "it's built with Electron" is all I need to know at this point. I appreciate the effort you've put in it, and I am sure that it is a great improvement. After all, I am using VS Code on a daily basis, and it's all about Electron, so I don't think that it will be that much slower than a fully native app. However, there is something about the minimal footprint nature of native macOS that I just can't go around. You just feel the snappiness of it, on a sub-nano-second level.
AnonC 2y ago
I do not see a privacy policy nor anything about telemetry, analytics or other data collection by the app. It would be good to clearly state what you’re collecting or not collecting. Without this, running such an app on a desktop OS seems a bit scary. I also hope you’re able to add something about the business model soon.
- xaellison 2y ago
  yeah this is an immediate show-stopper for me, at least for professional usage
indrex 2y ago
When I first started coding, I wished there was an “app” for it where I just start writing code. Now there is.
- abdullahkhalids 2y ago
  I was taught coding on Matlab. It had everything built in, and no package management to worry about. As green freshmen, we were making games in week 2 of the course, and running science simulations soon after.
  - s0rce 2y ago
    Similarly, I used Mathematica. I really enjoyed having things just work. I now use mostly Python and spend a bunch of time with dependency issues.
    - mrtranscendence 2y ago
      I generally tend to think that complaints about dependency management in Python are way overblown -- it's usually not a problem for me. But lately I've been trying out some off-PyPI projects to investigate time series foundation models, and it would have made my life so much easier if the implementers of these libraries hadn't decided to pin to extremely specific versions of ten or twenty different dependencies. No, your library does not need exactly NumPy 1.22.3. You're just throwing unnecessary obstacles in the way of people using it. That pinning wouldn't really be a problem ordinarily, where I control the environment, but I'm running this particular code in a managed environment that I can't easily modify.
guesswho_ 2y ago
People are excited for less functional app. This is insane.
mrtranscendence 2y ago
Navigation between cells with j/k doesn't seem to work, unfortunately. I'm used to not having to move my hands to use the mouse when editing a Jupyter notebook.
remixer-dec 2y ago
Oh god, not another 550mb app... there are a lot of lightweight alternatives to electron that can provide the same frontend experience if you don't need nodejs: tauri, wails, pywebview...
kulikalov 2y ago
Looks great! I'd love to get a notification once you add remote servers support. What channel should I use? Besides discord.

611 points by jackhodkinson 2y ago

jackhodkinson 2y ago

Thanks for checking out my project. I'd love your feedback in the comments. I'm not sure if the post text above is visible (I can't see it on my phone's HN reader) so I'm going to repost it here as a comment too: I love Jupyter – it's how I learned to code back when I was working as a scientist. But I was always frustrated that there wasn't a simple and elegant app that I could use with my Mac. I made do by wrapping JupyterLab in a chrome app, and then more recently switching to VS Code to make use of Copilot. I've always craved a more focused and lighter-weight experience when working in a notebook. That's why I created Satyrn. It starts up really fast (faster time-to-execution than VS Code or JupyterLab), you can launch notebooks right from the Finder, and the design is super minimalist. It's got an OpenAI integration (use your own API key) for multi-cell generation with your notebook as context (I'll add other LLMs soon). And many more useful features like a virtual environment management UI, Black code formatting, and easy image/table copy buttons. Full disclosure: it's built with Electron. I originally wrote it in Swift but couldn't get the editor experience to where I wanted it. Now it supports autocomplete, multi-cursor editing, and moving the cursor between cells just like you'd expect from JupyterLab or VS Code. Satyrn sits on top of the jupyter-server, so it works with all your existing python kernels, Jupyter configuration, and ipynb files. It only works with local files at the moment, but I'm planning to extend it to support remote servers as well. I'm an indie developer, and I will try to monetize at some point, but it's free while in alpha. If you're interested, please try it out! I'd love your feedback in the comments, or you can contact me at jack-at-satyrn-dot-app.

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pbronez 2y ago

Cool! Surprised to hear you started with a native UI and pivoted to electron. What was the major blocker there? I recently got frustrated with OpenSCAD and decided to try CadQuery and Build123d. The modeling backend is a big step forward, but the GUI is not nearly as good as OpenSCAD. I managed to get it working via VSCode with a plugin, but I’m dreaming of embedding everything in a dedicated MacOS app so I can jump into CAD work without hacking through dev setup.

jackhodkinson 2y ago
There aren't many great production-ready open-source frameworks for code-editor components in Swift. I assessed quite a few but found that the feature completeness was far from what I needed. I tried to fork [CodeEditSourceEditor](https://github.com/CodeEditApp/CodeEditSourceEditor https://github.com/CodeEditApp/CodeEditSourceEditor) and add the extra features I wanted, but I think it would have taken me 6-12 months to get it to an acceptable state, meanwhile not spending any time focusing on the rest of the product experience. I decided to play around with Typescript and Electron over a weekend and ended up getting a really solid prototype so I made the heart wrenching decision to move over. I'm messing around with writing my own text editor component in Swift now, but it's quite a big endeavour to get the standard expected for a production ready product. I'm assuming a pure-swift CAD UI would be equally difficult. Would be really cool to see that tho.
- rjurney 2y ago
  Don't listen to the grinches that stole Swift. Electron is fine. We have lots of RAM. Just make it good. Data scientists won't care.
- cageface 2y ago
  FWIW I've had good experiences with Tauri so far. It's great being able to call back easily into Rust code and I haven't had any real issues with the wrapped web view. At this point I'd start with Tauri first and only switch to Electron only if I really need something only Chrome supports or if I need to support Linux. I guess the webview story there is not so good.

yboris 2y ago

I hope you consider an open source model: code available freely on GitHub & app available for purchase on your website. I was scared about doing it this way, but it worked out for me: https://videohubapp.com/ https://videohubapp.com/ for pay-what-you-want-$5-minimum for my app, and https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App git-clone-and-build for the code. I currently sell about 60 copies per month (same average across the last 4 years too).

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breck 2y ago
> pay-what-you-want-$5-minimum for my app > I currently sell about 60 copies per month (same average across the last 4 years too). I'm guessing the median is $5, can you share what the average is?
- Y_Y 2y ago
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  - ayhanfuat 2y ago
    No. If majority is paying 5 when the minimum is 5, the median is also 5. The rest can still be paying more than 5 which would yield a higher mean.
    - Y_Y 2y ago
      (edit: remove nonsense)
      - deleted 2y ago
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    - crazygringo 2y ago
      Even simpler -- if the majority is paying 5, the median is 5 period.

phromo 2y ago

Alternatives and innovation in this space are greatly appreciated! I run Linux and Windows so I keep my eyes fixed on https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/12062#issuecomment-2131469004 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/12062#issuecommen... - - zed is a cross platform, gpu rendered, rust-based editor.. Jupyter support should arrive soonish

ayhanfuat 2y ago
nteract (https://nteract.io/ https://nteract.io/) supports windows and linux.
- phromo 2y ago
  I still use Atom+Hydrogen most days.. About the same amount of years since the last (major) updates as nteract. https://github.com/nteract/hydrogen https://github.com/nteract/hydrogen
jackhodkinson 2y ago
That contribution to Zed from rgbkrk looks awesome.
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cheptsov 2y ago

Can I use it to connect to a remote Jupyter notebook server?

jackhodkinson 2y ago
Not yet! But I'm working on this :)
- googletron 2y ago
  This is the feature, I want.
- cheptsov 2y ago
  That will be interesting. Happy to test and share feedback. Previously, I was a part of the DataSpell and PyCharm team building notebook support. Now working with dstack, where we support dev environments and super interested in remote support.
  - jackhodkinson 2y ago
    Thanks! I'll let you know when it's ready. What do you use now to work with remote environments? JupyterLab or VS Code?
    - cheptsov 2y ago
      Right now, mostly VSCode - mainly because it’s a desktop IDE and it also supports notebooks.
    - kernelsanderz 2y ago
      I use jupyterlab via an SSH tunnel
    - singhrac 2y ago
      We use a self-hosted JupyterLab. I would love to have an external tool though our existing workflow isn’t too bad.

Halan 2y ago

The reason people use an actual IDE instead of Jupyter web is because it allows you to jump in the libraries source code

jackhodkinson 2y ago
Agreed, that's a big one. I'd love to add that capability to Satyrn too.
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ibash 2y ago

Thank you for attempting to use swift first. Electron apps are bloated and overused. Excited to play around with this!

jackhodkinson 2y ago
I agree! At the very least I can port this to Tauri to make it have a smaller footprint.
- mritchie712 2y ago
  Might be some useful things you can do with the Tauri rust backend too
- yboris 2y ago
  Since your app is currently Electron I'm surprised it doesn't work with Windows. Would it be hard to get the app to play nicely with Windows?
dmazzoni 2y ago
Agreed about Electron apps! But...a really good code editor is a good example of something that's extremely hard to implement using native text controls, but there are great ones based on web tech. I wonder if embedding system WebKit on macOS or using something like NeutralinoJS would be a good alternative? The pro is your app is much smaller and lighter. The con is that any bugs in your system web control are out of your control, and certain tight integration with web APIs might not be possible.
Vegenoid 2y ago
From the post: > Full disclosure: it's built with Electron. I originally wrote it in Swift but couldn't get the editor experience to where I wanted it. Now it supports autocomplete, multi-cursor editing, and moving the cursor between cells just like you'd expect from JupyterLab or VS Code. Consider taking this as evidence that Electron isn't bad, instead of evidence that you shouldn't use this program.
xenator 2y ago

magnio 2y ago

To be frank, I don't see any additional features of the app over VSCode, other than it starts up faster, which does not matter much as VSCode starts up faster than the import cell of any notebooks I have. Also, one big reason I use VSCode for notebook is to get the Python LSP. Good luck to you though, I do think the demographics of scientists who find VSCode confusing is actually sizeable.

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fastball 2y ago
I have VSCode open 24/7 so even that feature doesn't help me.
rjurney 2y ago
Lots of people use both VSCode and native Jupyter notebooks that would love this app as it develops.
nxpnsv 2y ago
But if you aren't using VSCode (we exist) this looks quite useful. That said, I just open my jupyter sessions in firefox and am pretty happy with that...
vouaobrasil 2y ago
Mental separation, I think. It's nice to take a break from the code editor and have a focused app for quick analysis, like a calculator.

asdf_snar 2y ago

I use Jupyter Lab every day on OSX in scientific/academic work, so I feel I am your target audience. In case it helps you gauge my impression, I spent about two minutes reading the post and scrolling through the website. I feel I did not understand the main advantages of this notebook aside from the AI integration. I don't understand how "start-up" time is a cost; I have a Jupyter server running at all times and use it as a scratch-pad throughout the day, so it is always available. I don't understand the "modern command palette". As far as I can tell all the commands are available to regular Jupyter Labs, and either way I always use hotkeys for them. The code formatting using black isn't bad, but notebooks are for scratchy ideas, not real code. If I'm at the point of formatting code, it's going in an actual IDE. I'd even argue providing formatting inside of a notebook encourages bad habits for scientists, who prefer to stay entirely within a notebook, but are then sometimes unable to reproduce their results. I don't see the advantage of the copy-paste; I can copy paste directly from Labs to Slack/online editing pages, and certain Latex typesetters. Pros: it looks pretty, the site has nice demo videos (in terms of quality; I didn't understand the content). I want to like this but I don't see any benefits for a power user except for the AI integration; if AI is the only selling point then I prefer to get it differently.

jackhodkinson 2y ago
Thanks for your feedback! If you'd be happy to share: I'm curious to know what scientific field you work in? Do you do 100% computational work, or is it a mixture of experimental and computational?
- asdf_snar 2y ago
  Sure. I do algorithm development at a biotech company, it is 100% computational work. I am not a software developer by training, my background is in mathematics.
ayhanfuat 2y ago
I also use notebooks and qtconsole daily so I'd like to chime in. - I don't have a continuously running notebook server. I start it when I need to and shut it down if I won't be working with it for a while. I do like the idea of clicking an icon and starting an app. - Modern command palette, I believe, is similar to what you would see in apps like VS code. It doesn't offer more commands but instead make it easier to find and execute commands. I don't use Jupyter Lab so I don't know if it has a command palette but Jupyter Notebook doesn't so that seems like an advantage to me. - I disagree on the formatting point, too. Even if I am just doing something very quick I cannot stand seeing lines extending some length, no space after a colon, single vs double quote inconsistency etc. So I do spend time formatting them even if I am on IDLE and know for sure I am not going to save it. Thankfully, IPython added support for Black so it is less of an issue for me. Apps in this area generally focused on extending Jupyter to maybe combine SQL/JS with Python, making data exploration easier but I do appreciate a light app that just gives me a notebook experience with some small advantages, especially considering Classic Notebook is going to go away soon. I'll definitely give it a try.

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oli5679 2y ago

I use notebooks the whole time, normally in vs-code and with github copilot setup. I found it quite painful to point it to a couple of environments I have, and confusing how i get it pointing to my gpt4 api keys. Once I did these two I was not sure how to prompt rather than typing a command. Good luck with this, don't mean this in a critical way, just trying to give some feedback of what I think when I first try it.

rahimnathwani 2y ago
I also edit my notebooks in vscode. I wouldn't switch to something that doesn't support GitHub copilot, unless completions are much better.
- jackhodkinson 2y ago
  Thanks for your feedback! I'm looking into this. I'd also really like copilot here.
jackhodkinson 2y ago
I'll work on making them easier to configure. At the moment you press `g` (for generate) while in command-mode to create a "prompt cell". I'll think of ways to make this more obvious. Appreciate you spending the time to try it out and share your feedback.
rhodysurf 2y ago
Yeah vscode also finds the virtualenv from the current project automatically whihc is probably the biggest thing for me that stops me for using this, alongside copilot support

tomwphillips 2y ago

Why “modern”? I suggest you use more descriptive adjectives.

s3p 2y ago
I think the approach is a Mac-first app that follows Apple's design language, no?
- crazygringo 2y ago
  Yup, that's what "modern" means to me in this context. Thought it was totally clear. It looks like and acts like it was built for Sonoma, not for Sierra.
  - tomwphillips 2y ago
    That didn’t occur to me. As an IPython/Jupyter user for over a decade and Mac user for two decades, it’s not something I personally care about or an issue I’ve felt.
    - crazygringo 2y ago
      Well sure, plenty of users don't care about aesthetics. And the Jupyter notebook interface certainly isn't aesthetically pleasing. Colab is not as bad, but it's still not nice. But some people do care about aesthetics, and this interface is actually aesthetically pleasing.
aflag 2y ago
I always felt that if you have nothing to say about your project you say it's modern. They just coded it, so it must be
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BaculumMeumEst 2y ago

Dude I just started getting into deep learning and have been flabbergasted getting stuff working. I installed jupyter and torch via homebrew. I can use torch fine from programs, or in venvs, but when I try to use torch in a Jupyter notebook it cannot find the module. Is it a different python environment or something?

nickvazz 2y ago
Hey, I used to run into the same issue and figured out installing conda, and utilizing its python was the easiest to keep things straight. Once you install conda and can activate your environment, then when using pip, don’t just call `pip install` because your path could be using a different pip than you expect. Instead use `python -m pip install` after activating your conda environment but make sure you’re using the right Python (`which python` & `conda env list`)
adammarples 2y ago
Python packaging etc can be a real pain point. I would suggest not using homebrew for these, in fact uninstall them. For jupiter/torch heavy work, I would install anaconda and then use that exclusively. Best of luck, it can be annoying but follow a good guide online you'll be OK.
jackhodkinson 2y ago
It can be confusing. The key is that you probably have multiple versions of python installed on your computer (that's normal). Secondly, the default "kernel" in Jupyter was probably not the one you used to install torch. I'd suggest 2 things to help: 1. Try `pyenv` for python version management 2. See this tutorial for how to create a virtual environment and add it as a Jupyter kernel: https://selvamsubbiah.com/run-jupyter-notebook-in-a-virtual-environment/ https://selvamsubbiah.com/run-jupyter-notebook-in-a-virtual-... Satyrn makes it easier to add virtual environments as a kernel, but you still will need to create the virtual environment and install torch there yourself. That's a really great point you made about how confusing it is to pip install stuff with `!pip` when working in the notebook. Right now Satyrn does not support the `!` commands, but I will add this soon and try to make it so `!pip` works with the expected virtual environment you are working with.

29athrowaway 2y ago

Does it work with Sagemath?

jackhodkinson 2y ago
Is this it? https://www.sagemath.org/ https://www.sagemath.org/ This looks like a programming language built on top of Python. Satyrn only supports the Python programming language right now. If you are using this on the regular, I'm curious if you have tried Julia or Mathematica, if so why do you use Sagemath over those alternatives?
- 29athrowaway 2y ago
  There are many reasons to use Sagemath. It unifies multiple existing open source math libraries and packages. It integrates with Octave, Scilab, Maxima, etc. It also integrates well with LaTeX... you can take results, format them as TeX and also render them. Its objective is to be a replacement for Maple, Mathematica and MATLAB, which are prohibitively expensive for many people. As such, once it's installed it comes with batteries included and you can easily share workbooks that others can run without falling into a DevOps-like situation. The DSL that is offers can be more convenient than Python. There are some interesting quickstart tutorials here https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/prep/quickstart.html https://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/prep/quickstart.html And it was also discussed earlier on HN here, with many comments that are more informed than anything I could say at this moment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23511183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23511183 I tried JetBrains DataSpell as a desktop frontend for Sage and the results were not good.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  > If you are using this on the regular, I'm curious if you have tried Julia or Mathematica, if so why do you use Sagemath over those alternatives? Sagemath has pure math stuff. Julia does not. Sagemath can do lots of cool symbolic calculations like rings, quotient rings, algebraic curves, etc. Mathematica has some of this functionality but it's not free.

twarge 2y ago

This sort of high performance minimalism is precisely what makes the Mac app ecosystem great. Not because you can't write the same thing on other platforms, but because everyone who cares about it has condensed on the Mac platform. Would love to see this adopt the document-based app API and the toolbar API.

behnamoh 2y ago
> This sort of high performance minimalism is precisely what makes the Mac app ecosystem great. Not because you can't write the same thing on other platforms, but because everyone who cares about it has condensed on the Mac platform. Meh. Most apps like this are built for the Mac because a lot of programmers use Macs. If anything, Apple makes it difficult to develop for macOS because they keep breaking APIs with each update.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  Pretty sure that’s what they’re saying
  - behnamoh 2y ago
    Pretty sure that's not what they're saying.
- samatman 2y ago
  > Most apps like this are built for the Mac because People with Macs have money, and are willing to use it to pay for software. Not that deep.
- azinman2 2y ago
  > Apple makes it difficult to develop for macOS because they keep breaking APIs with each update. Like what
  - newaccount74 2y ago
    Every macOS release breaks a few things, but to be honest it's not much of an issue. Here are some recent things that required code changes from developers: - disabling user interaction when trying to request items from the keychain - views no longer clipping to bounds by default - installing login items and background services The latter two were understandable, because they were caused by new features, but some are just caused by a lack of testing. It's not a big deal, and I'm sure Electron apps have similar issues, but app developers do have to put in some work to make sure their apps keep working properly on macOS.

dsp_person 2y ago

Anyone else live in a Jupyter QtConsole?

flippant 2y ago
Thank you. I didn't know this existed. https://qtconsole.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ https://qtconsole.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
CamperBob2 2y ago
Yes, I have it set up to launch at OS startup, along with a hotkey to task-switch to it at any time. An incredibly underrated tool. JupyterLab still has its uses, but it's just too heavyweight for the "calculator replacement" role IMO. QtConsole is perfect. Or at least, it is with a bit of additional startup code.
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BiteCode_dev 2y ago
Yes, very underrated tool.

blindriver 2y ago

Can someone explain their views on Jupyter notebooks? As far as I can tell, the instructor/content creators will set up the "notebook" and students can read the notes and click on the "play" button to see it work in action. Is there anything else besides that? I guess I'm old school and am used to cutting and pasting and running things in my own terminal, so I'm wondering if there are added benefits that I'm not aware of of Jupyter notebooks. It seems to have a very loyal following so I would love to learn their perspective!

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dijit 2y ago
Really good for doing some basic data science, the kind of thing where you want some graphs based on some source data that is variable. Being able to change functions around and generate new graphs (IE; if I want the mean not the median for a contrived example) is really handy.
adobrawy 2y ago
Data science / ML are using that. Databricks (data platform, data warehouse) have support to run notebooks in workflows on periodic basis. There is market of professional use of them.
ericjmorey 2y ago
You can also edit the notebook, both code blocks and text. It's used for quick visual iterative exploration of datasets with descriptions. The focus is on creating a report of your analysis and process rather than a "product".
jackhodkinson 2y ago
When I learned to program I was working as a scientist. I was relying on OriginLab (a scientific version of Excel) for my data analysis and it was a real pain. I decided to start using python for analysis and plotting and started with scripts and terminal interactivity, but found it too clunky. Jupyter feels more interactive when you are working with data because you need to explore the data and experiment with data manipulation in a way I found quite natural to do in a notebook. Since then I've moved into software development where I rely on my IDE for any coding that involves working with more than a few modules. And as I got better working with an IDE I did gravitate toward making a script for certain kinds of tasks where I use to reach for a notebook, but there are still many data analysis tasks that I would much prefer a notebook for. It's also quite nice to share a notebook with someone to show them how you arrived at your conclusions, and it's nice for them to be able to take your analysis and modify it or test their own ideas on top of yours. Obviously the notebooks are not great for collaboration without some fiddling around with git, but they are still very good for this kind of collaboration.

fnoof 2y ago

How does this compare to the “official” Jupyter desktop app: https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab-desktop https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab-desktop

dijit 2y ago
Looks like a native app vs an Electron app.
- ashvardanian 2y ago
  Both are web apps sadly.
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nerdponx 2y ago
My question as well. My experience using notebooks with 3rd party Jupyter clients has been poor, eg Nteract and Pycharm. Whereas Jupyterlab Desktop just works. You would have to convince me to switch to anything else.
croemer 2y ago
It's closed source

rrr_oh_man 2y ago

I’m still hoping for something that is at least 80% as functional and integrated as RStudio is for R.

Affric 2y ago
Have you had a look at Quarto? Any thoughts?
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phyalow 2y ago
its called running and editing notebooks with vscode...

ylluminate 2y ago

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dkga 2y ago

Congrats! Sorry if you shared here below and I missed it, but I'd love to hear what exactly didn't work out with a pure Swift approach. I'm trying that route for a SQL client based on duckdb (as a side project) and would be very helpful to avoid similar pitfalls for example.

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jackhodkinson 2y ago
Awesome! I did some explaining in this comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40899748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40899748 Good luck with your project. Let me know if you'd like any tips on the code editor stuff or anything else I can help with.
- dkga 2y ago
  Great, many thanks! And yes, I hope to have something to share in some ~12 months time. The goal ie to be essentially an SQL client that (a) benefits from ducker's excellent performance and flexible SQL language, and (b) has data-science-helpful features, like the ability to filter or reorder columns with the mouse (or keyboard) afeter the data is queries.

madjam002 2y ago

Is there something like Jupyter for Javascript/Typescript, ideally self hosted? At the moment I just do data science using one off scripts in NodeJS but seeing these notebook style formats recently where different chunks of code appear to be snapshotted and then visualisations can be easily integrated looks quite nice.

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__natty__ 2y ago
Yes. You can use Jupyter notebooks with both JavaScript and TypeScript. Such support is from Deno for example [0] [0] https://deno.com/blog/v1.37 https://deno.com/blog/v1.37
mrbombastic 2y ago
You might want to check out Observable - not sure about self hosting but js based and has notebooks with inline plots and all that jazz. https://observablehq.com/documentation/notebooks/ https://observablehq.com/documentation/notebooks/
leonseled 2y ago
Not exactly a notebook but Quokka gives you that REPL playground experience.
nichochar 2y ago
We are building one right now. It's very early and we have only "soft launched", but you can check it out here. https://github.com/srcbookdev/srcbook https://github.com/srcbookdev/srcbook

wenc 2y ago

I used to use Jupyter and Jupyter Lab, but by far the most able Jupyter interface today is actually VS Code (I use this every day). The interface is sleek, the language server and debugger are built in (so completions, variable renaming, step-by-step debugging etc. all work seamlessly) and it makes Jupyter a pleasure to use.

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gcr 2y ago

Nice! Is this loading the same webpage whatever JupyterLab is serving or did you write the JavaScript machinery for cell management etc yourself? If the latter, are interactive plotly graphs or IPython widgets on your radar?

jackhodkinson 2y ago
Thank you :) I did write the entire client. I will add support for those soon! I love interactive widgets.

bambam24 2y ago

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threwaway4392 2y ago

For vim users, jupyter-vim [0] coupled with a jupyter QtConsole is hard to beat. The short video [1] is maybe self-explanatory, but in short: - vim on the left half of the screen, a jupyter QtConsole on the right, showing any plots, possibly interactive. - the kernel on the jupyter QtConsole can be running on a powerful remote host, e.g., with GPU, but the plots are displayed locally - Focused window is always vim. From vim editing a .py and without ever leaving vim or touching the mouse, one connects once to the jupyter kernel of the QtConsole. Then one can send a selection of lines, or vim text objects, to be evaluated in the QtConsole with a few keystrokes. Code is shown+evaluated and plots are displayed in the QtConsole as if the code sent from vim had been typed there. One gets the full power of both vim and jupyter kernels with native plots. No more browser based notebooks or other editors with half-baked vim bindings. [0]: https://github.com/jupyter-vim/jupyter-vim https://github.com/jupyter-vim/jupyter-vim [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h59cbg4HqpY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h59cbg4HqpY

abdullahkhalids 2y ago
Or you could use emacs and have the images displayed inline.
- arjvik 2y ago
  ...and you just triggered a holy war :)
dsp_person 2y ago
The ability to send code to a Jupyter kernel is pretty sweet. I made a python script that starts a kernel in the background that you can pipe commands to/from in your shell, or even open a QtConsole with the current state. https://github.com/digitalsignalperson/comma-python https://github.com/digitalsignalperson/comma-python
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ashu1461 2y ago

What were your initial thoughts on tradeoffs on making this a vs code extension vs a separate app ?

fredoliveira 2y ago
The post is literally right here. > I've always craved a more focused and lighter-weight experience when working in a notebook. That's why I created Satyrn. > It starts up really fast (faster time-to-execution than VS Code or JupyterLab)
- floam 2y ago
  He did not answer the question in your quote.

uptownfunk 2y ago

I just want a Python version of rstudio- I bet they probably support Python by now

wch 2y ago
You should check out Positron, which is currently beta. It's created by Posit (the company formerly known as RStudio). https://github.com/posit-dev/positron https://github.com/posit-dev/positron
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nothrowaways 2y ago

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omerhac 2y ago

Great app. A good example why js apps can never be more than OK, and native apps can really rock. Would be amazing if I could use my sublime bindings here

speedgoose 2y ago
> it's built with Electron

benrutter 2y ago

This looks great! Since jupyter notebooks are used by a lot of people (like scientists, business analysts etc) I think there's a genuine niche for just having a jupyter notebook client for folks to get started with quickly. Adding something like built in .venv support and even python distribution would be immense (I'm thinking of a dream scenario where installing something like this gives a beginner all the tools to get up and running python notebooks with) any plans for that on the roadmap?

jackhodkinson 2y ago
Even as a command line power user, I still wish it were easier to install dependencies while working in a notebook. If I'm working on a project I don't want to have to switch to my terminal if I can solve the problem in one command from my notebook. With a little careful thought into good UX I don't see why it can't be easy for a beginner at the same time useful to a pro user (and still compatible with any virtual environment).
entangled_atom 2y ago
Totally agree with this sentiment. There is definite value in providing an easy to setup fully featured jupyter environment for people who are just starting out. The company I work at (qBraid) has a qBraid Lab product that does exactly this, but tailored more toward those in the quantum computing ecosystem. We may even be interested in offering Satyrn as another option on our currently platform alongside VSCode and standard Jupyter, if the creator(s) are ever interested in licensing and/or some form of co-selling model.

vanshk7 2y ago

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keepamovin 2y ago

I love your website design! How did you put that together? What did you use for the app screenshots and logo graphics? Is your project related to these two other "Satyrn"s ?? Satyrn: A Notebook alternative that supports branching code and local collaboration. https://github.com/CharlesAverill/satyrn https://github.com/CharlesAverill/satyrn Satyrn: A Platform for Analytics Augmented Generation https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.12069 https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.12069

jackhodkinson 2y ago
Thanks! I just used the builtin MacOS screenshot tool to take the screenshots. I used Tailwind to style the page. I really like the default shadow that the "selected window" screenshot adds, but since there are also "selected area" screenshots I decided to take them without the default shadow (by holding option) and then add it in using Tailwind. The logo was done with ChatGPT and my friend editing it with some graphic design software :) This project is unrelated to those others. I like the branching code idea tho, would love to have something like that. I'd love it if you could rewind your code execution to a point in time and then play it forward differently. I suppose that would be a pretty big memory overhead tho.

croemer 2y ago

I'm a bit disappointed the code isn't available. I scrolled the landing page for a long time to find the Github button as I strongly expected something that was highly upvoted on hackernews was open source.

wiihack 2y ago

Looks great! :)

alisiddiq 2y ago

My biggest issue with Jupyter is the key bindings, I want to be able to import my Jetbrains keybindings to Jupyter notebooks but havent found a good way. The Jupyter implementation in Pycharm is just terrible so still stuck using jupyter in the browser. Will your tool allow custom key bindings?

senand 2y ago
Isn't this better if you use DataSpell from Jetbrains instead of Pycharm?
- pocketsand 2y ago
  My experience with DataSpell has not been great. Granted, my workflow leans toward R, and it DataSpell has a Python-first approach, but the app was basically completely broken to even load R, and StackOverflow was full of relatively old posts of people with the same problem. If they really cared about that app that would never happen. I just do a lot of my R editing in PyCharm now and flip between terminals and RStudio. I was hoping DataSpell could unify that, but it's not ready. The new RStudio IDE is promising, however.

hpen 2y ago

Anybody interested in a Jupyter notebook like experience for Swift and iOS development ML / data science algorithms. Think write on macOS but run on an actual device but send data back to the host and draw charts, etc. Like run computer vision alogirhtms your developing on actual hardware, cameras, etc but with notebook like cells on macOS

spott 2y ago

So, it looks like if you try and add a kernel for a virtualenv that doesn't have ipykernel installed you immediately install it in the virtualenv with `pip` It would be great if you asked the user before doing this. My environments are usually managed by one of poetry or pipenv or nix, not pip. Which means now my lock files and installed stuff is out of sync.

jackhodkinson 2y ago
Great feedback, thank you. I've heard this before. I'm thinking of keeping the default but adding an option in settings to "ask before installation" for users who prefer that behaviour (similar to VS Code).
- spott 2y ago
  Maybe the first time it happens you pop up with a confirmation dialog and it has a checkbox that says something like “always ask” (and an option in the settings).

mritchie712 2y ago

This is great. I've wanted to build something similar many times, but like you've mentioned, it's tricky to monetize. Feature request: If I drag a tabular file (e.g. CSV, parquet, etc.) into the UI, do something like: temp1 = pd.read_csv('path_to_file') temp1.head() Good luck with it!

jackhodkinson 2y ago
Thanks! That's a great idea. I have been thinking of doing something like this.

JBGruber 2y ago

A bit off topic, sorry, but: Jupyter is bad for research. The ability to run code out of order, but then save the output, is confusing for the one doing the research and everybody who wants to reproduce it. I don't understand why the decision was made for Jupyter to combine the source code of a notebook and the output. Things like Quarto keep both separate, as essentially all programming languages inteded, while providing an easy-to-use implementation of literate programming.

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PheonixPharts 2y ago
This can be solved by just running "restart and re-run all" as a matter of habit whenever you feel like you are in a good state. If you're looking at someone else's notebook, this should also be your first step. If you're using Python, Jupyter still offers a major advantage for sharing prototyping/research work in that it it is the only real way to provide literate programming. There are cases where code inside of a notebook should be pulled into a library, but pure code will always be inferior when most of your work is expository and exploratory. Literate Haskell, and R Markdown are superior forms of literate programming, but Jupyter is not terrible if you just take some basic precautions before sharing. Notebooks work great as... notebooks. Which is primarily how they're used in my experience. When the bulk of your work is prototyping and and exploring an idea, they're still an excellent choice.
- JBGruber 2y ago
  Quarto is like R Markdown, but it supports the jupyter kernel, so Python support is essentially the same as jupyter notebooks. But the good practices are built in, instead of you having to remember running "restart and re-run all". So it's a valid option for literate programming in Python (and several other languages). When I say "confusing", I don't mean I don't understand it. I mean that while using it, there is a higher than zero chance that you get confused at some point and mess up. I love the feature that you can interactivly develop/prototype research. I just think better/less error-prone tools are available (which also track nicer on git btw, since quarto docs are flat text files).

p5v 2y ago

I am sorry, but "it's built with Electron" is all I need to know at this point. I appreciate the effort you've put in it, and I am sure that it is a great improvement. After all, I am using VS Code on a daily basis, and it's all about Electron, so I don't think that it will be that much slower than a fully native app. However, there is something about the minimal footprint nature of native macOS that I just can't go around. You just feel the snappiness of it, on a sub-nano-second level.

AnonC 2y ago

I do not see a privacy policy nor anything about telemetry, analytics or other data collection by the app. It would be good to clearly state what you’re collecting or not collecting. Without this, running such an app on a desktop OS seems a bit scary. I also hope you’re able to add something about the business model soon.

xaellison 2y ago
yeah this is an immediate show-stopper for me, at least for professional usage

indrex 2y ago

When I first started coding, I wished there was an “app” for it where I just start writing code. Now there is.

abdullahkhalids 2y ago
I was taught coding on Matlab. It had everything built in, and no package management to worry about. As green freshmen, we were making games in week 2 of the course, and running science simulations soon after.
- s0rce 2y ago
  Similarly, I used Mathematica. I really enjoyed having things just work. I now use mostly Python and spend a bunch of time with dependency issues.
  - mrtranscendence 2y ago
    I generally tend to think that complaints about dependency management in Python are way overblown -- it's usually not a problem for me. But lately I've been trying out some off-PyPI projects to investigate time series foundation models, and it would have made my life so much easier if the implementers of these libraries hadn't decided to pin to extremely specific versions of ten or twenty different dependencies. No, your library does not need exactly NumPy 1.22.3. You're just throwing unnecessary obstacles in the way of people using it. That pinning wouldn't really be a problem ordinarily, where I control the environment, but I'm running this particular code in a managed environment that I can't easily modify.

guesswho_ 2y ago

People are excited for less functional app. This is insane.

mrtranscendence 2y ago

Navigation between cells with j/k doesn't seem to work, unfortunately. I'm used to not having to move my hands to use the mouse when editing a Jupyter notebook.

remixer-dec 2y ago

Oh god, not another 550mb app... there are a lot of lightweight alternatives to electron that can provide the same frontend experience if you don't need nodejs: tauri, wails, pywebview...

kulikalov 2y ago

Looks great! I'd love to get a notification once you add remote servers support. What channel should I use? Besides discord.