Estimating Number of Jupyter Notebooks on Github
In the same spirit as “Effective Java” and “Effective C++” we need to have a book entitled “Effective Jupyter Notebooks”. Here are some of my items below. Maybe this sub-thread can come up with an outline for this book.Item #1 Writing a notebook is foremost an exercise in expository writing. Make sure the writing is high quality is the first objective when writing a notebook. This is the Knuth’s literate programming idea where prose takes precedence over code, which is usually the reverse of the way we usually program; code first, comments second.Item #2 Don't use notebooks for general purpose programming. Notebooks are supposed to have an audience and clearly explain something.Item #3 Keep code cells simple and clear. If needing a comment in the code block, consider putting that verbiage in a markdown cell instead and elaborating on the idea the notebook is trying to convey.Item #4 Don't make notebooks a long series of extended code cells, or even worse, just one long cell. Explain what is going on or see Item #2.