[asdf_snar]

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.

[ayhanfuat]

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.

[asdf_snar]

Thanks for your thoughtful answer.

- Re: continuously running a notebook server, how about an alias in your ~/.*rc file that just launches a new JLab? Personally I don't find the startup time so high, so it doesn't seem to me 'startup time' is the strongest lead to sell the product. (Of course, if most people find that the startup of a notebook is indeed a large cost then it's a fine point to make. )

- Re: command palette, gotcha. As you say, classic notebooks are going away (and I haven't touched one in a while).

- Re: formatting, I take it back. You're right, there's been plenty of times I've wanted to have nicer formatting in a notebook/lab, that's nice.

[hatmatrix]

I switched to Windows/WSL2 a few years back so don't have a fight in this game (though if it's Electron, why only macOS?) - but having to switch between IDE and Jupyter for code formatting seems like unnecessary overhead.

But TBH Quarto is much better in this regard; you can use a VScode together with another IDE if you wish to format/edit/run chunks of code in the same file.

[asdf_snar]

> but having to switch between IDE and Jupyter for code formatting seems like unnecessary overhead.

You're right about this. I don't love my setup (and have not put enough effort into optimizing it -- hence my reticence at learning Yet Another Tool), but the main reason I use notebooks is for objects that persist in memory. I can load up some huge dataset, keep it open, and jump back to it whenever I want over the next day/week/month without having to "reload" it (fetch data from some server and do processing).

I'd love a robust Jupyter-in-Sublime experience, where I have all the editing/hotkeys of Sublime along with this persistence of objects.

Quarto looks cool, might check that out. If there's any specific part of it you think is awesome, please do point it out. Thanks.

[jackhodkinson]

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]

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.