[fryguy]

My problem with notebooks is that I feel like the natural mental model for them is a spreadsheet mental model, not a REPL mental model. Under that assumption, changing a calculation in the middle means that all of the cells that depend on that calculation would be updated, but instead you need to go and manually re-run the cells after it that depend on that calculation (or re-run the entire notebook) to see the effect on later things. Keeping track of the internal state of the REPL environment is tricky, and my notebooks have usually just ended up being convenient REPL blocks rather than a useful notebook since that's the workflow it emphasizes.

[WorldMaker]

That's something that I think Observable [1], in my modest usage, seems to do well.

[1] https://observablehq.com/

[jacobolus]

Yep, the real complaint is “dead state”, not out of order execution. Worrying about linear flow per se turns out to be misguided based on lack of imagination for/experience with a better model: reactive re-rendering of dependent cells. Observable entirely solves the dead state problem, in a much more effective way than just guaranteeing linear flow would do.

* * *

More generally, Observable solves or at least ameliorates every item in the linked article’s list of complaints. (In 2020, any survey about modern notebook environments really should be discussing it.)

I found the article quite superficial. More like “water cooler gripes from notebook users we polled” than fundamental problems with or opportunities for notebooks as a cognitive tool. I think you could have learned more or less the same thing from going to whatever online forum Jupyter users write their complaints at and skimming the discussion for a couple weeks.

I guess this might be the best we can hope for from the results of a questionnaire like this. But it seems crazy having an article about notebook UI which makes no mention of spreadsheets, literate programming, Mathematica, REPLs, Bret Victor’s work, etc.

From the title I was hoping for something more thoughtful and insightful.

[tel]

This falls apart when computation is a factor, though. You can't recompute the whole notebook on every commit when there are 30 cells that each take 2-8 seconds to complete.

[stevesimmons]

In Jupyter I approach this by structuring my exploratory analysis in sections, with the minimum of variables reused between sections.

Typically the time-intensive data prep stage is section 1.

The remaining sections are designed essentially like function blocks: data inputs listed in the first cell and data outputs/visualizations towards the end.

Once I decide the exploratory analysis in a section is more-or-less right, I bundle up the code cells into a standalone function, ready for reuse later in my analysis.

Jupyter notebooks can easily get disorganised with out-of-order state. However that is their strength too: exploratory analysis and trying different code approaches is inherently a creative rather than a linear activity.

[Sean1708]

Maybe I'm missing a joke here, but if that's your workflow then there's absolutely no advantage to notebooks over something like Spyder or even VS Code.

[gdy]

If you have a few long data loading and preprocessing steps it's a pain to wait for them to run again, people try to avoid it.

When something odd begins to happen, they don't immediately consider the possibility that it's not their bug and waste time trying to 'debug' the problem instead of just rerunning the notebook.

[graphpapa]

Well if block 1 takes ages but everything after that is dependant 2->3->4 etc. Obviously it would be nice to just re-run block two and have those changes cascade

[tobmlt]

That’s what I’d always do. On more complex notebooks, though, is it possible that isn’t a solution? I wouldn’t think so but I am happy to be surprised. Then again I use notebooks only at the end of a project to present work in “executable presentation” style. Restart and Rerun all has been always been sufficient for me. More generally, I took a look at notebooks, thought, “Why develop with all the extra baggage” and left it at that until ready to experiment with presentation methods for (tight) core ideas.

[dkersten]

Why are you even using notebooks at all then?