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Comment by kgwgk | Hacker News Reader

> using netobooks in general (literal programming)

I guess you meant literate programming.

Literate programming is different from interleaving console inputs and outputs and random paragraphs in the same document.

Even if we expand the original idea to comprise that, literate programming is much more than that.

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yeah it was supposed to say literate programming. anyway there is no doubt that org-mode (and jupyter) is an application of literate programming concepts. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming#Literate_...

But programming is more than writing notebooks.

How many python packages are written in literate programming style?

How many programs written as notebooks would be actually better if they were structured differently?

? i never said that its a one-size-fit-all solution. certainly you would not write a software package in a notebook. but you might write a tutorial, textbook, academic paper, homework, personal notes, etc.

My point was that a comment against notebooks being overused - where a different structure would make more sense - is not a necessarily a comment against literate programming.

The issues with notebooks - in general - are unrelated to literate programming. The notebook format is convenient to have some kind of “interactive” programming though, rather than “literate”.

> The notebook format is convenient to have some kind of “interactive” programming though, rather than “literate”

interactive programming is usually handled by the repl, for which you do not need a notebook

Of course you don’t! The notebooks are glorified repls and you can also have literate programming without interactive notebooks. What notebooks get you compared to alternatives is both things at the same time.

my point is similar but restricted to jupyter. i think that that org-mode can offer a much more advanced and complete literate programing environment than jupyter that's far beyond just markdown + repl

Agreed.

Note how babel is presented, by the way (last point in particular):

  Babel augments Org code blocks by providing:

  interactive and programmatic execution of code blocks;

  code blocks as functions that accept parameters, refer to other code blocks, and can be called remotely; and

  export to files for literate programming.

https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html

Have you considered that the notebook is an evolution of a repl, with improved visualization and feedback, for for analysis-heavy work? The problem starts when notebooks are used for development and production.

no because its not supperior to a proper lisp repl which you use to develop and interact with a live production system

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read%E2%80%93eval%E2%80%93pr...

Did you mind checking the availability of people with lisp skills vs most other languages used in research and DS? Or the availability of libraries and pace of evolution? If your solution is to teach lisp massively and have everyone just build their tooling, can you explain why it hasn't happened yet, despite lisp being around much longer than most languages in use in this field - and many attempts at what you're suggesting?

i only said lisp repl is superior. far more superior actually. whether its popular is a different matter. there are people perfectly content with subpar technology and thats ok. however it doesnt hurt to know that there are alternatives

I have a sense that there are a quite lot more people with Lisp skills than there are jobs. It should be easy to find Lisp people. And I mean reasonably young people; not like pulling Cobol people out of retirement. Lisps continue to attract new people.

lisp is not only feature-cool its even retro-cool :)

R is lispy enough for what they're suggesting.

hardly. look into whats available through slime with common lisp as an example of an advanced repl

I have done, thanks. R has most of what you need to replicate this, and is also a widely used DS language.

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