Building Blocks for Interactive Computing

What are the building blocks for interactive computing?



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%load_ext load_style
%load_style images.css
from IPython.display import display, Image

File browser



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Image('images/lego-filebrowser.png', width='80%')









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Terminal



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Image('images/lego-terminal.png', width='80%')









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Text editor (a place to type code)



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Image('images/lego-texteditor.png', width='80%')









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Output



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Image('images/lego-output.png', width='80%')









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Other building blocks

Kernels (processe for running code)
- Python
- R
- Julia
- Scala
Document formats for storing code and results
- Notebook document format
- Text files
Narrative text
Debugger
Profiler
Variable inspector

Notebooks

The Jupyter Notebook is one way of assembling these building blocks as a linear sequence of input and output. There are other ways of assembling these building blocks:

Text editor hooked up to a kernel and output area
More traditional REPL
Dashboard with only output

Recently, we worked with collaborators from IBM to perform a UX survey of Jupyter users. The executive summary can be read here.

This survey, along with many years of talking to users has lead us to the following vision:

Jupyter needs to provide flexible building blocks for interactive computing that can be assembled and applied to different workflows

JupyterLab

JupyterLab in the next generation user interface for project Jupyter that will provide this frame work for assembling these building blocks in different ways. It will ship alongside the existing notebook in version 5.0.

JupyterLab is an IDE = Interactive Development Environment