[tiledjinn]

no, it's a failed concept. frequently you'll find effectively shell scripts that couple workflows to some graphical environment for spurious reasons -- except they're baked with bad assumptions about state in that environment as outlined in the article.

if you want knuth's literate programming, just comment liberally per that guidance.

or carry forward with them and print your retractions later. vOv

[dan-g]

I’m not sure what your definition of “failed” is, but notebooks of various kinds have been bringing value and accessibility to various different programming languages for a while now. If it was a “failed concept” I don’t think we’d see as much adoption, let alone new iterations and advancements in the space.

Just because you don’t use something doesn’t mean it’s not worth something to someone else (or in this case, a lot of people), despite its shortcomings.

[tiledjinn]

inferior mechanisms frequently gain popularity, despite whether people who adopt them would be better off if they didn't.

people shouldn't use measuring cups either; since scales are more accurate, faster, and involve less cleanup. and yet.

[biorach]

> inferior mechanisms frequently gain popularity

then they haven't "failed"

> people shouldn't use measuring cups either; since scales are more accurate

low accuracy is fine in many cooking applications. you're being pedantic

[jrajav]

Generally notebooks are used specifically when statefulness gets in the way, and an interactive feedback loop is the entire end goal, not the means. Being able to iterate on operations at a cell level with reactivity is totally game changing for such use cases. If you don't get where that would be valuable, you probably just haven't encountered such a use case yet.

[mistrial9]

yes and, the strong interactive graphics inline are important for a lot of learning situations