Easy Peasy Computer Literacy
by Mike Levin
Friday, May 20, 2022Finding & Following JupyterLab Github Contributors
Some of Amigaâs Loveworthiness Came From Unix
Sometimes I work on mlseo. I should really plant itâs documentation in a subfolder of this MikeLevinSEO.com website, because MLSEO, you know. Also, Iâll actually be making it Machine Learning SEO in short order, so stay tuned! Life really does just begin at fifty. It is a blessed few who find their ikigai in their twenties, and I wasnât one of them. I got a very strong clue though, because so much of the Amiga computerâs operating system was inspired by Unix that I hardly realized how much of the important lifelong loveworthy stuff I really was learning.
At Fifty Years-Old, I Found My Ikigai
I have a lot of people to thank for that towards whom I was quite bitter for a large chunk of my life, oh say from 21 years-old through 41 years-old. Fourty is when I had my kid and realized life was too short to switch my professional passions around more than one more time. And that 1-more time was to Linux, Python, vim & git. And I found my Ikigai now, and Iâm about 10-years into it, being 51 years old as I am. And that puts about those 10,000 hours and 10-years of mastery under my belt. Woot! Yeah, and I do feel it. I do feel it âin my fingersâ as they say. My violin be internal. I think in vim. Thatâs the biggest take-away now. I think in vim. And so onto JupyterLab, LOL!
Itâs Exploratory Learning, Not Exploratory Coding
Despite thinking in vim (which is where Iâm typing this right now), I keep my primary Python package code in JupyterLab because itâs just a much better environment for exploratory learning. I want to say exploratory coding, but weâre always coding. Talking is coding. Writing is coding. Technically, weâre encoding our thoughts. And I think it mystifies the process if we use code-words. So call it what it is. When youâre working in a Jupyter Notebook, youâre doing exploratory learning (and coding⊠encoding⊠get it?).
Donald Knuth Coined The Phrase
Next thing to think about is that all this stuff about exploratory learning in order to develop easy peasy literacy expressing yourself in tech comes from a guy called Donald Knuth who is still around as of this writing and is one of the grandparents of tech, much in the same way and generation as Ken Thompson who invented Unix. Don wrote TeX which the still-popular math formatting language LaTeX is based on. So while not quite the contribution as Ken, Donâs stuff is still kick-ass important.
Jeremy Howard Connected The Dots
Another guy, a cool Australian named [Jeremy Howard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Howard_(entrepreneur), has connected the dots between Jupyterâs Notebook .ipynb-files and Pythonâs .py-files in such a way as to âbring aliveâ Donâs vision of Computer Literacy. Heâs also the writer of the fast.ai machine learning library, so heâs no slouch. The dot-connecting package Iâm using that allows me to use Notebooks to make Python packages is called nbdev. Itâs a game changer.
Easy Peasy Computer Literacy
Wow, this mere opening to the MLSEO work I wanted to sit down an do before the sun even came up this morning (I started at 4:30 AM) grew into an article-like post that no longer belongs on MikeLevinSEO.com. So even though itâll confuse a few people when the read the intro and itâs residing on MikeLev.in, I feel the need to yank the article over there. That amounts to just copy/pasting between two already loaded text-files, each of which contains the entire blog as one-long-file for the entire respective site. Easy peasy lemon breezy, Computer Liter Literacy.
Copy/Pasting Journal Entry Between Websites
And so⊠POOF, now weâre on MikeLev.in. And now I am free to ramble without being compelled to actually go over to JupyterLab and get to work, even though I do indeed want/need to. But I feel a deeper need to finish out this thought and to do so in uninhibited article form.
War Of The Text-editors Still Waging & VSCode Ainât In It
There is a divide. That divide is between vendor-driven power-tools like VSCode and vim. Itâs an agonizing soul-wrenching divide because the vendors are going to infuse your blood with super-soldier serum and youâre going to wake-up Captain America⊠for as long as they say-so and under the conditions they say-so. VSCode while awesome today, is a blocker to your long-term obsolescence resistance and ability to stay tenacious in the tech industry. Thatâs because when everything changes around youâyes, even VSCodeâs appeal and viabilityâvim will still be there. So will emacs. The original text-editor wars is still as real today as it was in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
Donât End Up Shitâs Creek Without vim or emacs
Just because Microsoft bought Github and stole the Atom text-editorâs innovations and threw millions of dollars worth of employee support behind Atom 2.0 (VSCose), it doesnât undo 70-years of âold-schoolâ text-editor evolution. Vim is the crocodile design. eMacs is the turtle design. Turtles and crocs have survived longer than dinosaurs and humans put together. Now while that doesnât invalidate the much more âhumanâ VSCode, it should be a warning that forming habits that you should wish to last a lifetime (keyboard shortcuts, macros, etc.). The realities of tech, platforms, fads or whatever will change, and those completely dependent on VSCode will find themselves up shitâs creek without a paddle. vim or emacs are your only paddles on shitâs creek.
So Then Why JupyterLab?
So why in the world would I advocate stand-alone JupyterLab desktopâŠ
Oh! This shouldnât only be an article on MikeLev.in. I should also livestream the process of following the JupyterLab contributors on Github (and maybe Twitter), which just occurred to me.
The little things that make all the difference. Hereâs why Iâm so anxious about this, and thus also motivated:
- The Mac version has auto-update
- The Windows version doesnât
- This is Sooooooo important for mainstream adoption
- Because the uninstall/download/re-install story on Windows is horrible
- Uninstall 2 components
- Find the .exe download
- Override all of Microsoftâs anti-spyware defenses (scary)
- Find the hidden ârun anywayâsâ TWICE
- Wait for the ânew version availableâ
- Rinse & repeat
There is a resistance to get stuff into the official âStoresâ from Apple and Microsoft, because it âfeelsâ incompatible with the spirit of the free and open source software movement. This is initial inertial resistance of the type that slows-down or even kills endeavors. It hasnât happened yet with JupyterLab on Windows, but something like it has happened on the Mac.
I plan to follow all the contributors to JupyterLab Standalone (Desktop, a.k.a. electron) version.