55K views · Oct 29, 2020 · 52:09 · 4 HN recommenders · 8 mentions · discussed 2020–2025
Jeremy Howard defends Jupyter notebooks as a serious development environment, especially when paired with nbdev. He responds directly to Joel Grus's talk about why he dislikes notebooks, and contrasts REPL-style and notebook-style work.
Why Hacker News points people here: Whenever notebooks get criticized, HN commenters point to it as the standard rebuttal from a prominent practitioner.
“I strongly recommend Jeremy Howard's (founder of fast.ai) recent talk”HN comment, 2020
“I think both talks are very worth watching”
Jeremy Howard's defense of notebooks as a development medium
If you haven't yet: I think both talks are very worth watching: I don't like notebooks ( link ) by Joel Grus I like notebooks ( this video ) by Jeremy Howard notebooks are a very interesting medium and they have both shortcomings as well as things they are great at and neither were totally obvious to me.
“I strongly recommend Jeremy Howard's (founder of fast.ai) recent talk”
Addresses common critiques of Jupyter notebooks
I strongly recommend Jeremy Howard's (founder of fast.ai) recent talk - "I Like Notebooks" ( this video ). He addresses some of the concerns/critiques about jupyter notebooks.
“That video cannot be seen without watching Jeremy Howard's rebuttal”
Howard's rebuttal to criticism of notebooks
That video cannot be seen without watching Jeremy Howard's rebuttal: I Like Notebooks. I also believe this was the video that got him kicked out of a conference(?) because it was too confrontational? Which was just ugly for a guy who clearly loves being an educator. [0] this video
“I have a video where I show the difference between these styles of working in some detail”
Shows differences between line-oriented REPL and notebook working styles
No that's not the reason - or at least, not for everyone. I created nbdev. I've been coding for over 30 years, and spent over 10 years using R and S-PLUS. I've used Delphi, Visual Studio, Emacs, vim, vscode, and many other editors and IDEs, including many with integrated line-oriented REPLs. There's a big difference between a line-oriented plain text REPL, and a Mathematica/Jupyter-style notebook REPL, especially when you want to mix and match your charts, image outputs, rich table outputs, interactive JS outputs, and so forth. Also, for experimentation, where you want to go back and change things to see what happens (e.g. very common in data science) I find it much easier and more understandable in a notebook. I have a video where I show the difference between these styles of working in some detail: this video
“please watch this first”
Persuades notebook skeptics before they judge nbdev
A from-scratch rewrite of nbdev was released today -- details on what's new are in the launch post: link Let me know if you have any questions or comments -- I'm the lead dev on the project. (If you're in the "I don't like notebooks" camp, please watch this first: this video )
“Jeremy recorded a new version”
Re-recorded version of the talk after removal from the conference
afaiu the talk was removed from or not put on the website of the conference, Jeremy recorded a new version: this video
“which was done quite respectfully from what I watched”
Contains the section judged unkind, which the commenter found respectful
this video is the specific section that seems to have been judged as "unkind". To me, that seems like a massive over-reaction or massively uncharitable interpretation of the talk focused on a single point of disagreement, which was done quite respectfully from what I watched.
“Here's Jeremy Howard explaining why he loves doing everything in notebooks”
Howard explains why he does everything in notebooks
Another successful example of literate programming is fastHTML, and probably most of the code written at fast.ai and answer.ai. link Here's Jeremy Howard explaining why he loves doing everything in notebooks: this video
