Elixir Livebook is a secret weapon for documentation

Re:Elixir Livebook is a secret weapon for documentation by goeiedaggoeie on Monday August 07, 2023 @08:04AM (#37033296)

Sorry for asking a dumb question, but how is this different from using Jupyter to write your interactive documentation/runbooks and interactive tests?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Elixir Livebook is a secret weapon for documentation by Terretta on Monday August 07, 2023 @08:23AM (#37033447)

> how is this different from using Jupyter

It requires you to run a far less common tech stack and limits your hiring to a vanishingly small subset of developers.

Paradoxically, that may be a good thing.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Elixir Livebook is a secret weapon for documentation by goeiedaggoeie on Monday August 07, 2023 @08:26AM (#37033470)

Love it! yes, it might be better. We have found paying above market average and being tighter on interviews has a similar outcome.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Elixir Livebook is a secret weapon for documentation by throwawaymaths on Monday August 07, 2023 @09:13AM (#37033984)

Elixir market is already more high paying than python.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Elixir Livebook is a secret weapon for documentation by nesarkvechnep on Monday August 07, 2023 @11:04AM (#37035465)

According to SO’s survey, Erlang is the highest paying technology or something like that.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Elixir Livebook is a secret weapon for documentation by voicedYoda on Monday August 07, 2023 @10:45AM (#37035182)

This is just, wrong. There's actually a huge number of Elixirists, but after this long in the game, we're used to cynical elitists...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Elixir Livebook is a secret weapon for documentation by throwawaymaths on Monday August 07, 2023 @09:14AM (#37033993)

Outputs markdown, easy to share.

Jupyter outputs JSON.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Elixir Livebook is a secret weapon for documentation by krstf13 on Monday August 07, 2023 @09:45AM (#37034375)

While Livebook will mostly have an appeal for people already working with erlang/elixir, it does have a few features that are pretty nice.

- it’s collaborative (think Google docs for code) when several people are working on the same instance of a livebook;

- it’s easy to extend with so-called smart cells (which are essentially pieces of gui you can inject in your document https://news.livebook.dev/v0.6-automate-and-learn-with-smart... ). Smart cells are available for various tasks (db connection/ interaction, data frame exploration, ML tasks, maps), and building your own is relatively easy;

- you can turn a notebook into a web app ( https://news.livebook.dev/deploy-notebooks-as-apps-quality-o... )

- you can run your code an a remote elixir node by attaching to it (although this requires some knowledge of distributed elixir/erlang )

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Elixir Livebook is a secret weapon for documentation by goeiedaggoeie on Monday August 07, 2023 @11:04AM (#37035466)

thanks for the detailed answer of the differences. The interactive (I assume using CRDT's) is a good feature, jupyter server does not have this and is at a time a bit of a hassle. Also deploying it directly as an app is pretty sweet.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Elixir Livebook is a secret weapon for documentation by Becher19 on Monday August 07, 2023 @11:20AM (#37035690)

Livebook actually uses state reducers as described here[1]. Except for cell content. There it uses Operational Transformation. The source code[2] is really instructional and easy to understand. I highly recommend to look into it :)

[1] https://github.com/jonatanklosko/notebooks/blob/main/article... [2] https://github.com/livebook-dev/livebook/blob/main/lib/liveb...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Elixir Livebook is a secret weapon for documentation by goeiedaggoeie on Monday August 07, 2023 @12:14PM (#37036441)

A great read, thanks so much!

[ Parent | on HN ]