+1 to Olav's comment on loosing the flow of a piece of code when you need
to scroll in the notebook environment. With notebooks I miss having a
separate console for experimentation / demonstration purposes. If I start
to do this kind of stuff in the notebook I find it increases the complexity
for students. With the CLI / text editor environment it's much easier to
keep side thoughts separate from the main lesson flow.

That said, nothing beats a notebook for incrementally developing a plot or
figure where each stage needs visualising.



On Thu, 11 May 2017 at 02:16 Olav Vahtras <[email protected]> wrote:

> I have tried both. Jupyter is fine for demonstrations of small snippets of
> code that fit on a screen.  It is fantastic for e.g. pandas and plotting.
> But as soon you have to scroll back and forth in the browser to relate
> different part of code to each other, I get lost and so do the students.
> Great for experimentation but not for the development skills we try to
> teach.
>
> Cheers
> Olav
>
> On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 9:45 PM, Eric Jankowski <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I've taught both ways and lean towards Jupyter for shorter-contact
>> workshops, and lean towards CLI for longer-contact workshops and classes.
>>
>> Jupyter notebooks lower the cognitive load associated with CLI, text
>> editors, edit-save-execute iterations, and are a lower barrier to providing
>> a standardized implementation (e.g., Anaconda on learner's machines or a
>> public-facing notebook server you control). With the lower load, it's
>> possible to go from 0 to image processing in no time, and that time saved I
>> think contributes substantially to the take-aways of our learners in short
>> workshops. "Wow! I did some real data wrangling there, and I can use this
>> on my work today!" I also *really* like having the code and the
>> presentation of data in one place, so when I work with students now it's
>> easy to fiddle with things in plots in the notebooks which significantly
>> accelerates our group understanding of what our data means. (as compared to
>> "plot it a different way and see you next week")
>>
>> My minor qualm is that the notebooks don't provide exposure to the CLI
>> and the very common workflows that combine loops, pipes, python scripts,
>> and other unixy tools. In the context of my semester-long courses we'll
>> start with CLI, python, and git, and maybe 5 weeks in show "Here are
>> jupyter notebooks, which are a really great compliment to what we've
>> learned so far!".
>> And in terms of keeping track of code used by, managing jupyter notebooks
>> with version control can be tricky.
>>
>> So, the quick version: Jupyter notebooks are amazing, but in some ways
>> orthogonal to the automation, reproducibility, and sharing ecosystem that
>> software carpentry has been thoughtful about making self-consistent.
>>
>> Talk permissions granted!
>>
>> Best,
>> Eric
>>
>> On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 1:03 PM, Maneesha Sane <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I am giving two talks next week at Bryn Mawr's Jupyter days conference  (
>>> http://jupyterday.blogs.brynmawr.edu/)
>>>
>>> One is running an intro to Python workshop using Jupyter and I'm piecing
>>> together parts of the SWC and DC curricula to teach it.
>>>
>>> The other talk is a shorter talk (~20 minutes, incuding Q&A) about the
>>> differences teaching Python via straight command line compared to teaching
>>> from the Jupyter notebook.  When I've taught for the Carpentries, I've
>>> always used Jupyter.  In other contexts, I've taught strictly from the
>>> CLI.  I'm curious to know if others have taught in both ways (either for
>>> the Carpentries or in other circumstances) and what you've thought of it.
>>> Advantages/disadvantages?  What you like and don't like about Jupyter and
>>> CLI environments?
>>>
>>> With your permission, I'd like to use some of your feedback in my talk.
>>> I also think it would be useful for Carpentries instructors to know in
>>> general, so please share any feedback to the list.
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Maneesha Sane
>>> Software Carpentry: https://software-carpentry.org/
>>> Data Carpentry: http://www.datacarpentry.org/
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Discuss mailing list
>>> [email protected]
>>> http://lists.software-carpentry.org/listinfo/discuss
>>>
>>
>>
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