
I Don't Like Notebooks [slides] - taeric
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1n2RlMdmv1p25Xy5thJUhkKGvjtV-dkAIsUXP-AL4ffI/preview#slide=id.g362da58057_0_1
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amrrs
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17856700](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17856700)

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taeric
Thanks for linking! I naively assumed that I would get redirected to any
previous submissions when I put in the link.

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sdrothrock
I really dislike meme-heavy presentations because they add a cultural layer to
the presentation that:

1\. Expects the audience to be familiar with what's being implied by the meme

2\. Influences people who ARE familiar with the meme depending on their
individual tastes regarding that meme or memes in general

3\. Are visually inconsistent and incredibly busy, making it tiring to parse
each slide

I really do want to see his thoughts on Notebooks and recognize that his
slides are meant as an accompaniment to his verbal presentation, but there are
just so many barriers to digesting his argument here and so many ways I feel
like he could have actually used the slides to provide supplementary
information rather than entertainment.

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JeanMarcS
I’ll add that on a slow connection like mine at the moment, after 30s I gave
up because I still hadn’t received the first one.

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blt
I am glad I'm not the only one. I find the hidden state confusing, and I
prefer my code to be in plain text files in a git repo.

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rmbeard
They are great for teaching everything except coding, use them for that, the
hidden state discussion is interesting and does come up frequently in
practice, I think I learnt something from this presentation. they shouldn't be
really used for development except as a scratch pad and they shouldn't be used
for teaching programming. However, they should definitely be used in teaching
in courses that are currently using suboptimal solutions and are traditionally
not programming courses, although might have some limited computational
content. That is what I use them for.

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weinzierl
_" Notebooks have tons and tons of hidden state that's easy to screw up an
reason about."_

I think this is the main point and something I can relate to. It's not only a
problem I see in software like Jupyter but primarily in Excel. Yet people seem
to love this approach.

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beatgammit
I honestly haven't tried Jupyter (is that the only "notebook"?), but I'm glad
that I'm not missing out.

I really don't get the problem that it's trying to solve. Wikis work great,
git repos work great and issue trackers work great; I really don't see much of
a need for anything more.

Does someone have a positive pitch for this concept? I'd really like to see an
opinionated alternative perspective.

