for background, the original author of nbdev has a good post outlining exactly how it relates to jupyter -

https://www.fast.ai/2019/12/02/nbdev/

Strange... "Nbdev is a system for something that we call exploratory programming." but no citation... the phrasing suggests this is something they believe they've come up with a name for?

The term has a wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploratory_programming

I'm aware, what I'm confused about is why they've phrased it as if it's something they call exploratory programming, as if they've coined the term.

I coined the term - and it turns out someone else did too, for something else. So be it. If someone else can think of a better term that's never been used before, then I'll happily use that instead.

The earlier usage mentioned in Wikipedia is entirely uncited there however, and seems to have only been used in one academic project AFAICT.

How are you sure you didn't just read it somewhere and then forgot? It has been mentioned many times in related literature (even in publication titles) https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22exploratory+programm...

Here's one from 1988 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/51607.51614

Are these unrelated? Is Nbdev not only a "new programming environment", but also a new concept that needs a new name?

"In some cases the estimates may be obvious. Perhaps the story is similar to others that have already been completed. In other cases the story may be very difficult to estimate and may require exploratory programming."

Kent Beck and Martin Fowler

http://index-of.es/Java/Planning%20Extreme%20Programming.pdf

Its a commonly understood term AFAIK

> Its a commonly understood term AFAIK

I agree - it's what made me raise an eyebrow... However, based on their comment above, the lead author of Nbdev believes to have coined the term.

My opinion is that due diligence and attribution are important. If I believed I'd coined a new term, I'd check first. Mistakes are easy to make, but when highlighted, perhaps corrections are more appropriate than negotiating with the person highlighting them:

From the lead author (jph00): ... If someone else can think of a better term that's never been used before, then I'll happily use that instead.

Why are people nitpicking about this? So the term/phrase he came up with was so descriptive that other people had also thought of the same term previously. He didn't steal anyones research on the topic, or steal code for the project, or deny credit to a developer working on a project. It's 2 simple words that are extremely common in the english language. Of course lots of people have happened to put them together before.

This is my second time on hacker news, and I don't think I will be back. Why not offer to help the project, or show support? Why try to find something to fight about? It's just demoralizing to see the lack of kindness from people.

People that “coin terms” that don’t spend the two seconds required to Google it and then spread around statements like “I coined it” are self-aggrandizing.

It’s worth calling them out and discouraging this behavior because it leads to missing entire fields of previous work for both the author and people who build on the work.

If you knew him at all or had bothered to spend the time to look at his work and projects in any level of depth, you would know he is not a self-aggrandizing person.

And if the arguement is that this is a gateway action that leads to other bad things, that's not an arguement I put any stock in. It's used a lot in many places and many discussions, but just focus calling out the bad. It isn't his responsibility to ensure that some person building off his work at some point in the future does the appropriate level of research appropriate for their project. Assuming that an action is bad because you think someday down the road it might lead someone else to do something and that that something will be a bad thing is just ridiculous.

> you would know he is not a self-aggrandizing person.

But he is, he just claimed he coined “exploratory programming” FFS. It takes a shocking lack of hubris to announce that you are on the cutting edge of a field where you get to coin terms without doing the trivial amount of searching to verify it first.

This is going off-topic. I highlighted something factual - this is not personal.

Whether they choose to update the materials and reference existing work is up to them.

Thank you. It just comes off very elitist and distasteful, not something you like to see in people doing big things. We want to look up to these people, not cringe when they "coin" a common phrase and dig their heels in when confronted.

It's certainly possible. Smalltalk is absolutely an important inspiration for nbdev, and that's a really great reference that you pointed out.

I'd probably call that analytics or analysis.

In electronics, we call it Breadboarding, and the results are expected to be temporary by all involved. Breadboarded circuits generally are not stable over time or movement.

Guessing at plausible answers:

- Nbdev started right around the 1.0 release of jupyterlab, and it might not have been on their radar

- Nbdev came out of fast.ai, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were using a ton of jupyter-specific features already which weren't supported by jupyterlab

It works fine in lab too, although I prefer using notebooks on the whole.

(I'm the lead author of nbdev).

Awesome! Thanks for chiming in :)

>is it a new environment, or is it an extended Jupyter Notebook? It looks like Jupyter Notebook to me. Why not Jupyter Lab?

Neither? It doesn't change the features of jupyter notebooks, and its not an improved/expanded UI like jupyter lab (you could use nbdev with jupyter lab). Its utilities and automation to make package/library development a better experience if jupyter is where you write your code.

From https://github.com/fastai/nbdev:

"nbdev is a library that allows you to develop a python library in Jupyter Notebooks, putting all your code, tests and documentation in one place."

Sure, but the OP link that I'm commenting on says it's a "new literate programming environment". Based on what you're quoting, the OP article is incorrect and needs correcting?