Announcing .NET Jupyter Notebooks

[52-6F-62]

Probably a good time to mention that for the JS-minded there is Bostock’s Observable Notebooks as well.

I think the only real drawback is no self hosting.

https://observablehq.com/

A pretty healthy example:

https://observablehq.com/@rreusser/2d-n-body-gravity-with-po...

[alexcnwy]

Mike Bostock is a beast - this d3.js example from 2013 still blows my mind: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012...

I haven’t gotten properly stuck into observable - in what ways is it better than using a jupyter notebook?

[jashkenas]

No self hosting? What do you mean?

The (reactive JavaScript) Observable runtime is open source, and every notebook is available compiled as an ES Module.

You can embed notebooks in their entirety on any webpage, or just grab the embed code for an individual cell, if the notebook produces a single visualization.

For the details in all their nitty gritty, see: https://observablehq.com/@observablehq/downloading-and-embed...

[carokann]

Also polynote.

> Polynote is an experimental polyglot notebook environment. Currently, it supports Scala and Python (with or without Spark), SQL, and Vega.

https://github.com/polynote/polynote

[rluiten]

I've been tinkering with Data-Forge Notebook. https://www.data-forge-notebook.com/

It supports javascript and typescript relatively new but capable.

[sooheon]

Nextjournal's another one in this space, more focused on reproducibility and polyglot support.

https://nextjournal.com

[zwieback]

Even though I love Python I don't really like Jupyter, seems like with a dev environment like VS or VSCode I can't quite find the right use case.

With C# it might be a different story, since the development cycle is fundamentally edit-compile-run an environment like Jupyter might give me an extra platform for in-between testing. I already use the Interactive built into VS quite a bit to figure out, for example, just the right format string for Datetime.Now.ToString() or stuff like that.

[bransonf]

The benefit of Jupyter notebooks really is about being able to share chunks of code and write narrative around it.

It isn’t really aiming to replace a dev environment like VSCode.

We’re seeing a rise of notebooks in particular because they encourage writing a lot of plain text around your code, and that’s really good both for teaching, and promoting good documentation skills for learners.

[whb07]

Try F# feels like Python in most regards but ends up having type inference.

Edit: if you think “oh that’s nice, just like Java/C++”, HECK NO. It goes beyond this, where complex modeling can easily be represented and things like pattern matching and other features not known in other langs

[Fr0styMatt88]

The thing that I find really daunting with Jupyter is the set of APIs that it seems I need to learn in order to get it to do anything cool, like for example visualizing data or a function, or making an interactive widget that does the same. I don’t remember the same kind of pain when playing around with Mathematica. I really want to like it and learn it — I really like interactive programming. It just never makes it high enough on my brain space list to seem worth it.

Since C# is my daily language, this is pretty cool though. I just really wish that I had a use-case strong enough for it to overcome the initial pains of learning it and the ongoing mental maintenance of staying usefully fluent in yet another set of libraries.

[nomel]

My use case is algorithm prototyping/development. It lets me mostly put the code aside and concentrate and quickly iterate on the algorithm. It's just a fancy, persistent, reproducible, REPL.

[jaked89]

C# has supported interactive scripting for years now since Roslyn came about. Even VS has a C# Interactive window.

[jpalomaki]

There are approaches to combine the two. See for example this article about Jupyter and vscode [1].

And to ”close the loop”, you can of course access vscode using browser with Visual Studio Online [2].

[1] https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/python/jupyter-support

[2] https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/services/visual-studio-on...

[jcmontx]

> I already use the Interactive built into VS quite a bit to figure out, for example, just the right format string for Datetime.Now.ToString() or stuff like that.

This is me_irl

[baq]

what I end up doing is having both the dev env and jupyter open at the same time - doing dev the normal way and then using a jupyter notebook for q&d manual validation and plots.

like others said already, jupyter isn't a development environment and trying to use it like one is asking for trouble, but it is a great REPL on some awesome steroids.

[rb808]

I set up Jupyter for my wider team to use, I thought it would be popular but nearly everyone chose to use PyCharm instead.

[Avalaxy]

I love .NET and I love Jupyter. I don't know how well they will combine though. I feel like the lack of Pandas and flexible typing of Python will make it a lot less useful.

[phillipcarter]

When you use it with F#, you get pretty close to the flexible typing feel of Python :)

[mumblemumble]

I haven't tried it, but what I'm envisioning is LinqPad with cells, including Markdown cells. And that sounds like a nice tool to me.

Even better if it works well with Deedle and FSharp.Charting. But I'm not going to demand everything on release day.

[cm2187]

Type inference should do most of the work

[nautilus12]

I use the almond scala kernel for jupyter and I think its awesome.

[sgillen]

This is great news. Jupyter has become my default tool for prototyping code. I keep trying other platforms that should theoretically have the same features, but I just find Jupyter much more pleasant to use.

[reportgunner]

How do you prevent jupyter getting lost in a sea of browser tabs ? Do you use it in a separate one ?

[alkonaut]

I’d love to see some nontrivial side by side examples of F# notebooks compared to python.

[phillipcarter]

Hey there, I work on F# at Microsoft and helped put together the initial set of samples for F#. You can access them here: https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/dotnet/try/master?urlpath=lab

What kinds of nontrivial samples would you be interested in seeing?

[Lucasoato]

Jupyter is such a cool tool, not only for data scientists! Give it a try, guys :D

[codeape]

Are there any plans for implementing code completion/intellisense?

[jonsequitur]

Yes, absolutely.

[nick_]

Integration of ML.NET and https://github.com/SciSharp would be amazing!

[growlist]

Now if only .NET had arguably the world's greatest IDE!

[ngcc_hk]

Not my cup of tea as I am more multi platform. Windows only I suppose. F# interesting but still.

[pault]

.NET core is open source and has worked on windows, mac os, and linux for a while now. I started working on a front end for a C# .net core project recently which is being developed at a primarily Windows shop and I got it running on Ubuntu in 15 minutes. I would have died before picking a Microsoft stack for a project 5 years ago, but the back end for my next project will be .net core. The developer experience and tooling are second to none these days. You really should give it another look.

[phillipcarter]

I use jupyter notebooks with F#/.NET primarily on macOS and Linux :)

[herrschnapps]

.net core is cross platform, so this should work on Linux and Mac.

[pietroppeter]

What about vb.net?