# Jupyter Notebook

67 Hacker News commenters recommended Jupyter Notebook and 39 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Recommended for interactive data exploration, prototyping and literate programming. Common caveat: out-of-order cell runs and poor version control.

## Why people recommend it

- Literate programming and knowledge sharing (4 comments): "jupyter notebooks are excellent for (at least) quick prototyping, data visualisation, literate programming and exploring ideas" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49321032)) "I'm also a fan and heavy user of Jupyter notebooks and literate programming in general." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46551630)) "start with literate programming tools like Jupyter notebooks or Observable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48670880))
- Step-by-step data inspection and feedback (2 comments): "The fact that you can look and investigate at the data you are dealing with at every step" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46160640)) "the feedback loop of writing few lines of Python inside Jupyter cell is much shorter" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48457543))
- Quick prototyping and exploratory analysis (2 comments): "Notebooks are great when you have a specific goal in mind. I think a canvas is nicer when you are doing exploratory data analysis" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47808103)) "jupyter notebooks are excellent for (at least) quick prototyping, data visualisation, literate programming and exploring ideas" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49321032))
- Multi-language and Python integration (2 comments): "All of this in Jupyter Notebook and really seamless Python integration." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46733390)) "I use Jupyter primarily with F#, the multi-language support is huge." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45815259))

## What people warn about

- Poor version control (4 comments): "Jupyter notebooks aren’t great for version control." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48550044)) "really hard to version control, as there will always be some random blob of non-textual data" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47887394)) "have a hate love relationship with it, especially when you add it into git" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45817132))
- Unreliable kernels and installs (2 comments): "Jupyter+conda/anaconda is almost always not installable and broken for most of its kernels" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46077019)) "bash kernel isn't a real terminal session so sudo prompts, top, etc can tend to get a bit wonky" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49906914))
- Out-of-order cell execution causes bugs (2 comments): "It's annoying to spend a bunch of time trying to track down a bug that doesn't exist when you restart from scratch" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45825729)) "Jupyter notebooks where you have to tell the computer which order to run the cells in is always baffling to me." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45893688))
- Hard to make production-ready (2 comments): "the insane amount of engineering that exists/existed to bring Jupyter notebooks to something more prod-worthy and reproducible" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47491773)) "I often work with data scientists and have to productionize their jupyter notebooks which is pure suboptimal hell." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49442172))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [marimo](https://hackerapproved.com/p/marimo.md): 53 recommend
- [Pluto.jl](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pluto-jl.md): 21 recommend
- [Google Colab](https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-colab.md): 18 recommend
- [Deepnote](https://hackerapproved.com/p/deepnote.md): 12 recommend
- [JupyterLite](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jupyterlite.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Jupyter Notebook", https://hackerapproved.com/p/jupyter/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).