Exploring an Alternative to Jupyter Notebooks for Python Development
Posted by Chris Moffitt in articles
Jupyter notebooks are an amazing tool for evaluating and exploring data. I have been using them as an integral part of my day to day analysis for several years and reach for them almost any time I need to do data analysis or exploration. Despite how much I like using python in Jupyter notebooks, I do wish for the editor capabilities you can find in VS Code. I also would like my files to work better when versioning them with git.
Recently, I have started using a solution that supports the interactivity of the Jupyter notebook and the developer friendliness of plain .py text files. Visual Studio Code enables this approach through Jupyter code cells and the Python Interactive Window. Using this combination, you can visualize and explore your data in real time with a plain python file that includes some lightweight markup. The resulting file works seamlessly with all VS Code editing features and supports clean git check ins.
The rest of this article will discuss how to use this python development workflow within VS Code and some of the primary reasons why you may or may not want to do so.
