Jupyter Notebook
The most recommended of 7 computational notebooks
Recommended for interactive data exploration, prototyping and literate programming. Common caveat: out-of-order cell runs and poor version control.
Recommended for interactive data exploration, prototyping and literate programming. Common caveat: out-of-order cell runs and poor version control.
106 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 67
- criticize it
- 39
- approval share
- 63%
Recommended in 12 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 67 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 12 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Literate programming and knowledge sharing
“jupyter notebooks are excellent for (at least) quick prototyping, data visualisation, literate programming and exploring ideas”
Comment from 16 Aug 2026 in “Numba in the Browser: Unlocking a New Scientific Python Stack in JupyterLite” “I'm also a fan and heavy user of Jupyter notebooks and literate programming in general.”
Comment from 9 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Executable Markdown files with Unix pipes” “start with literate programming tools like Jupyter notebooks or Observable”
Comment from 25 Jun 2026 in “Mixing Visual and Textual Code” - Comment from 5 Nov 2025 in “Deepnote, a Jupyter alternative, is going open source”
Step-by-step data inspection and feedback
“The fact that you can look and investigate at the data you are dealing with at every step”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Why we can’t quit Excel” “the feedback loop of writing few lines of Python inside Jupyter cell is much shorter”
Comment from 9 Jun 2026 in “Are you expected to run five Python type-checkers now?” Quick prototyping and exploratory analysis
“Notebooks are great when you have a specific goal in mind. I think a canvas is nicer when you are doing exploratory data analysis”
Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)” “jupyter notebooks are excellent for (at least) quick prototyping, data visualisation, literate programming and exploring ideas”
Comment from 16 Aug 2026 in “Numba in the Browser: Unlocking a New Scientific Python Stack in JupyterLite” Multi-language and Python integration
“All of this in Jupyter Notebook and really seamless Python integration.”
Comment from 23 Jan 2026 in “Why DuckDB is my first choice for data processing” “I use Jupyter primarily with F#, the multi-language support is huge.”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “Deepnote, a Jupyter alternative, is going open source”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Poor version control
“Jupyter notebooks aren’t great for version control.”
Comment from 16 Jun 2026 in “An O(x)Caml book that runs” “really hard to version control, as there will always be some random blob of non-textual data”
Comment from 24 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: I'm tracking 197 known exposures of health data from UK Biobank” “have a hate love relationship with it, especially when you add it into git”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “Deepnote, a Jupyter alternative, is going open source” - Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “Deepnote, a Jupyter alternative, is going open source”
Unreliable kernels and installs
“Jupyter+conda/anaconda is almost always not installable and broken for most of its kernels”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Comparing xeus-Haskell and ihaskell kernels” “bash kernel isn't a real terminal session so sudo prompts, top, etc can tend to get a bit wonky”
Comment from 30 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: Ledge.sh – Runnable Markdown Notes” Out-of-order cell execution causes bugs
“It's annoying to spend a bunch of time trying to track down a bug that doesn't exist when you restart from scratch”
Comment from 5 Nov 2025 in “Ruby and Its Neighbors: Smalltalk” “Jupyter notebooks where you have to tell the computer which order to run the cells in is always baffling to me.”
Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “The terminal of the future” Hard to make production-ready
“the insane amount of engineering that exists/existed to bring Jupyter notebooks to something more prod-worthy and reproducible”
Comment from 23 Mar 2026 in “If Dspy is so great, why isn't anyone using it?” “I often work with data scientists and have to productionize their jupyter notebooks which is pure suboptimal hell.”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Python's pre-declared constants are kinda weird”
Other computational notebooks people recommend
The four most recommended other computational notebooks, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jupyter NotebookThis page | 67 | 39 | 63% | 12 | — | — |
| marimo | 53 | 7 | 88% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Pluto.jl | 21 | 0 | 100% | 5 | — | Approved |
| Google Colab | 18 | 7 | 72% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Deepnote | 12 | 16 | 43% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 113 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“required training in understanding Python or similar high level programming language”
“So I used Python scripts in Jupyter to load Excel sheets into DuckDB”
“bash kernel isn't a real terminal session so sudo prompts, top, etc can tend to get a bit wonky”
“I often work with data scientists and have to productionize their jupyter notebooks”
“I often work with data scientists and have to productionize their jupyter notebooks which is pure suboptimal hell.”
“it's great to have Jupyter notebooks running inside a browser inside Emacs”
“jupyter notebooks are excellent for (at least) quick prototyping, data visualisation, literate programming and exploring ideas”
“the closest thing to the "living system" part of lisp that I personally grasp and love is ... Jupyter Notebooks”
“It feels almost criminal that it works, but it's quite nice.”
“Being able to run Jupyter cells independently is a feature until it's not.”
“If you need something more interactive, open a Jupyter or Marimo notebook.”
“start with literate programming tools like Jupyter notebooks or Observable”
“Jupyter notebooks aren’t great for version control.”
“the feedback loop of writing few lines of Python inside Jupyter cell is much shorter”
“built specifically for processing and presenting data, and can keep things as separate or combine as much as you need”
“I like showing how I solved a problem, so my "apps" are Jupyter notebooks.”
“really hard to version control, as there will always be some random blob of non-textual data”
“Notebooks are great when you have a specific goal in mind. I think a canvas is nicer when you are doing exploratory data analysis”
“the insane amount of engineering that exists/existed to bring Jupyter notebooks to something more prod-worthy and reproducible”
“so much more functional than slack for communicating real work product”
“programs structured in these notebooks really are perfectly situated for LLM analysis and extension”
“All of this in Jupyter Notebook and really seamless Python integration.”
“Jupyter is objectively more powerful from an interactivity standpoint, but the cell-based editing strategy has always fell short”
“Jupyter notebooks provide a unique value proposition for a FOSS-Mathematica”
“I'm also a fan and heavy user of Jupyter notebooks and literate programming in general.”
“I've always liked experimenting with Jupyter notebooks”
“Tools like Jupyter notebooks make this workflow seamless.”
“Python notebook have bridged the gap a bit, but always require a combination of libraries”
“The fact that you can look and investigate at the data you are dealing with at every step”
“Jupyter+conda/anaconda is almost always not installable and broken for most of its kernels”
“Python won via jupyter - I see this used ALL the time in universities.”
“Jupyter notebooks where you have to tell the computer which order to run the cells in is always baffling to me.”
“can best be done in a Python Jupyter Notebook (statistics)”
“The .ipynb format mixes source code with nondeterministic program output in the same file”
“It's annoying to spend a bunch of time trying to track down a bug that doesn't exist when you restart from scratch”
“This is incredibly useful for knowledge sharing and learning”
“have a hate love relationship with it, especially when you add it into git”
“I don't know anyone who isn't financially incentivized to see the Jupyter project fail”
“I use Jupyter primarily with F#, the multi-language support is huge.”
“bashing a reliable open source project really turned me off”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.