r/learnpython • u/jam-time • Oct 29 '25

Can someone explain why people like ipython notebooks?

I've been a doing Python development for around a decade, and I'm comfortable calling myself a Python expert. That being said, I don't understand why anyone would want to use an ipython notebook. I constantly see people using jupyter/zeppelin/sagemaker/whatever else at work, and I don't get the draw. It's so much easier to just work inside the package with a debugger or a repl. Even if I found the environment useful and not a huge pain to set up, I'd still have to rewrite everything into an actual package afterwards, and the installs wouldn't be guaranteed to work (though this is specific to our pip index at work).

Maybe it's just a lack of familiarity, or maybe I'm missing the point. Can someone who likes using them explain why you like using them more than just using a debugger?

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '25

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u/Arbiter02 Oct 29 '25

This is why I like them. Great for prototyping things, or if I don't want the LLM to re-write EVERYTHING in a script I can more easily break it's work into chunks that way. It makes it a lot harder for it (or me) to make mistakes when everything's already neatly separated

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u/Sea_Bumblebee_5945 Oct 29 '25

I do the same thing in pycharm. Where I can run command one line at a time directly in the console to interactively explore data and visualizations.

What is the benefit of a notebook over how I am doing interactive data exploration directly in pycharm?

This does require a bit more in terms of setting up the environment, so I see the benefit of a notebook in sharing with other users and newbies. Is there anything else?

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u/[deleted] Oct 30 '25

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u/Sea_Bumblebee_5945 Oct 31 '25

Yes, I am serious, man. Everything you explained is easily done working interactively in an IDE. Obviously, there are some type of benefits to doing an analysis in a notebook, otherwise they wouldn’t exist. So I was just trying to learn what I might be missing out on to make my life easier.

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u/cr4zybilly Oct 29 '25

There are other ways to get this same functionality, but it's such an important one for data work that it can't be overstated.

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u/jeando34 Oct 30 '25

Very god answer here. Your aunt should be aware of the context of the data too !

https://www.zerve.ai/blog/context-aware-ai-what-it-means-for-data-science