Interactive notebooks: Sharing the code

[Everett Toews]

http://www.nature.com/news/interactive-notebooks-sharing-the-code-1.16261

For all of those doing research or working with researchers.

"Designed to make data analysis easier to share and reproduce, the IPython notebook is being used increasingly by scientists who want to keep detailed records of their work, devise teaching modules and collaborate with others. Some researchers are even publishing the notebooks to back up their research papers — and Brown, among others, is pushing to use the program as a new form of interactive science publishing.

...

Pérez and Granger saw that data scientists found it hard to share detailed but understandable descriptions of their raw code that would allow others to build on their research. That is partly because many scientists in computation-intensive fields write code in an iterative and piecemeal fashion as each analysis reveals new insight and spins off multiple lines of inquiry. Keeping track of the different versions of code that produce various figures, and linking those files with explanatory notes, is a headache. And what gets published is usually not detailed enough for the reader to follow up on. “In my own computational physics work,” says Granger, “a high-level description of the algorithm that goes into the paper is light years away from the details that are written in the code. Without those details, there is no way that someone could reproduce it in a reasonable time scale.”"

Full disclosure: Some people from my team at Rackspace were instrumental in bringing IPython Notebook to the forefront and making it generally accessible.

Everett

[Barton Satchwill]

Reminds me of Knuth's 'literate programming'.

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Barton Satchwill
Development Manager
Cybera Inc.

www.cybera.ca

Cybera is a not-for-profit organization that works to spur and support innovation, for the economic benefit of Alberta, through the use of cyberinfrastructure.

[alex.va...@cybera.ca]

Between the visual IDE startup[1] and Wolfram Language[2], it seems to be a new trend.

[1] http://lighttable.com/2014/03/27/toward-a-better-programming/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjCWdsrVcBM

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Alex

[John Shillington]

Very nice. This is a great idea, and it's really nice to see it being deployed to help scientists. It reminded me of Swift Playgrounds, and then Alex's link reminded me that Swift Playgrounds was (were?) inspired by Light Table.

Then there's the Wolfram talk. Wow. That is amazing.

John

On Monday, November 10, 2014, <alex.va...@cybera.ca> wrote:

Between the visual IDE startup[1] and Wolfram Language[2], it seems to be a new trend.

[1] http://lighttable.com/2014/03/27/toward-a-better-programming/

[2] "Inside the Wolfram Language" by Stephen Wolfram

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John Shillington

VP, Technology

Cybera Inc.

mobile: +1.780.700.2548