nteract: a desktop-based tool for notebooks

Writing source code for programs with lightweight text editors or fully featured integrated development environments is considered the main method of programming. Notebooks, however, are an extremely practical tool. In contrast to IDEs, projects are set up more easily and they allow for running programs in a read-eval-print loop (REPL) environment. The Jupyter Notebooks Quick Start Guide [1] describes notebook documents as "… both human-readable documents containing the analysis description and the results (figures, tables, etc..) as well as executable documents which can be run to perform data analysis." Basically, markdown text can be mixed with program source code in a sequence of sections, each dedicated to either programming or description and documentation. Source code sections can be executed and the output is appended to the section, even formatted in the form of graphs, diagrams, or tables. REPL and notebook based environments have proven to be useful in many scenarios including when exploring new libraries and frameworks, to prototype code, or as an educational tool to create interactive lecture material. A prominent example is Jupyter, which is the highly successful project behind Jupyter Notebooks and the recent JupyterLab, i.e. web-based systems to run and share notebooks that contain code, equations, data visualizations, and data exploration and narrative text.