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Is anyone using Observable for something? In theory sounds good, I like the demos, but never actually saw anyone actually using it. We use Marimo notebooks as

by elAhmo 1y ago

Is anyone using Observable for something? In theory sounds good, I like the demos, but never actually saw anyone actually using it. We use Marimo notebooks as a great improvement over Jupyter.

th0ma5 1y ago
I never quite understood what their value proposition was for their lock-in.
etra0 1y ago
I've used it for fun to analyze some data of some community in real time without having to host anything on my side. Doing data analysis in javascript feels a bit weird at first, but it allows you to write a bit more functional code than python which I ended up liking. I dislike the plotting api but the pro of being automatically updated without me needing to do/host anything is cool.
jeffbee 1y ago
I use it regularly to make articles, reports, and especially maps for local decision makers. You'd be surprised, terrified to learn how little the elected officials know about their cities.
uptime 1y ago
I really like using Observable. Coming from years of d3 and not having a lot of R or Python to do, Observable feels great and things look beautiful. Lots of examples and it is great to see what others are making. Also love that I can use SQL on data in the notebook. The Plot functions can make quick work of various charts. I am looking forward to the static output future, and to see what they mean by more vanilla js in the app. Not saying it is better or worse than Jupyter etc. Just that it has been exciting to think I can make viz that would not look out of place in major pubs, etc.
m-schuetz 1y ago
I would have liked to, but I found D3 to be an unintelligible mess and the reverse evaluation of observable notebooks to be counterintuitive, given I do litterally anything else from top to bottom. I like notebooks and I wish there was a proper JS alternative to Jupyter, but this isn't it for me.
- chthonicdaemon 1y ago
  The notebooks aren't evaluated in reverse, but rather in the order they need to be to get the final results. Observable builds a DAG, similar to Marimo. You can put cells in any order you'd like. I think that in all the notebook solutions I've seen that allow this, a culture emerges where the "final result" is put at the top so that you can find it easily and interact with it as a user. The actual development process involves writing stuff top down and then re-ordering it for use.
- phailhaus 1y ago
  You can just write your observable notebook from top to bottom if you want. The reactive cells just means that you don't have to, and it will still work.
some_guy_nobel 1y ago
My team at <random faang company> uses Observable Framework for building dashboards. (I don't know who'd be the core customer of Observable Notebooks enough to pay, tbh).

by elAhmo 1y ago

Is anyone using Observable for something? In theory sounds good, I like the demos, but never actually saw anyone actually using it. We use Marimo notebooks as a great improvement over Jupyter.

th0ma5 1y ago

I never quite understood what their value proposition was for their lock-in.

etra0 1y ago

I've used it for fun to analyze some data of some community in real time without having to host anything on my side. Doing data analysis in javascript feels a bit weird at first, but it allows you to write a bit more functional code than python which I ended up liking. I dislike the plotting api but the pro of being automatically updated without me needing to do/host anything is cool.

jeffbee 1y ago

I use it regularly to make articles, reports, and especially maps for local decision makers. You'd be surprised, terrified to learn how little the elected officials know about their cities.

uptime 1y ago

I really like using Observable. Coming from years of d3 and not having a lot of R or Python to do, Observable feels great and things look beautiful. Lots of examples and it is great to see what others are making. Also love that I can use SQL on data in the notebook. The Plot functions can make quick work of various charts. I am looking forward to the static output future, and to see what they mean by more vanilla js in the app. Not saying it is better or worse than Jupyter etc. Just that it has been exciting to think I can make viz that would not look out of place in major pubs, etc.

m-schuetz 1y ago

I would have liked to, but I found D3 to be an unintelligible mess and the reverse evaluation of observable notebooks to be counterintuitive, given I do litterally anything else from top to bottom. I like notebooks and I wish there was a proper JS alternative to Jupyter, but this isn't it for me.

chthonicdaemon 1y ago
The notebooks aren't evaluated in reverse, but rather in the order they need to be to get the final results. Observable builds a DAG, similar to Marimo. You can put cells in any order you'd like. I think that in all the notebook solutions I've seen that allow this, a culture emerges where the "final result" is put at the top so that you can find it easily and interact with it as a user. The actual development process involves writing stuff top down and then re-ordering it for use.
phailhaus 1y ago
You can just write your observable notebook from top to bottom if you want. The reactive cells just means that you don't have to, and it will still work.

some_guy_nobel 1y ago

My team at <random faang company> uses Observable Framework for building dashboards. (I don't know who'd be the core customer of Observable Notebooks enough to pay, tbh).