smortaz

[msft] Wheuh! The system's being hammered - glad it's holding up well under load.

[msft] Thanks for digging! Honestly I understand as their team is actively trying to make things like jupyterlab work well right now. My guess is that if services like ours become wildly popular, someone (msft?) may step up and do & maintain the Windows port. I'm sure it'll be popular at Wall Street etc type shops. TBD.

[msft] Yes! Azure N-Series was announced recently and we hope to make it an option (HW selection in general). Whether it'll be free or not is above my pay grade. Would be nice to have a free tier at least (time/size).

[msft] Understood. Note that you can view notebooks w/o login. If you want a truly no login experience, try the awesome https://tmpnb.org service. But note that these are temporary (tmp-nb...) and will go away. The login we require is to show you your notebooks next time you're back. If your school has office365 the existing creds should just work.

[msft] Hi dnfromufa. Actually the decision to go with linux/docker was purely because, (at least) at that time, container mgmt was better on linux. In fact Azure ML backends run Windows and you can use notebooks to build ML models, then deploy to windows backends. Thank you Python & Anaconda xplat support!

RE Jupyterhub on Windows - if enough customers want it, I'm sure it can be done. Not convinced the demand is there yet. If you have data I'd love to see it!

Thanks.

[msft] Agree 100%. Focus on science, not scaffolding maintenance.

Sharing is basic now (ie unlisted-URL), but proper support (public/private/ro/etc) is coming soon.

[msft]

Awesome! Cambridge University (Dr Wells) just did that. Here's their notebook:

https://notebooks.azure.com/library/CUED-IA-Computing-Michae...

+1 for Julia - Please kindly file a request on github:

https://github.com/Microsoft/AzureNotebooks

(user request > our wishes)

[msft] :). Interestingly enough, the decision to use linux/docker was a no-brainer. I know from the outside it might seem odd, but these days, the attitude (and rightly so) is: use the language/stack/OS/toolchain/etc. you need to get your job done. I think you'll see an explosion of Linux/Python/Java/Go/... internally & externally on Azure.

Data point - our team (Python), wanted to hold a "Python day @ msft" event to teach/inform internal teams on the language/ecosystem. We were hoping maybe 50..100 would show up, if lucky. A thousand and twenty one people showed up!

Another data point - the official Azure CLI was just rewritten in Python (win/macos/linux):

https://github.com/Azure/azure-cli

Thanks!

[msft] Yes, we should improve the FP, especially for those who aren't familiar with Jupyter. Meanwhile, I hope this answers a few q's:

https://notebooks.azure.com/faq

[msft] Wakari is a more complete product from our partners at Continuum.io (we use their Anaconda distro for Azure Notebooks). We have various improvements planned & hope to reach parity soon!

[msft] Feel free to use it for your class askvictor & let us know ushow it does and how we can improve the service!

For a sample course that was taught for ~400 students this fall, see:

https://notebooks.azure.com/library/CUED-IA-Computing-Michae...

[msft] You are 100% correct that Jupyter (IPython formerly) has existed for a long time. We've been fans & partners with their core team for 6+ years.

Our 1st interaction with the awesome Jupyter team was enabling it in Visual Studio / Python:

https://github.com/Microsoft/PTVS/wiki/Using-IPython-with-PT...

After that we loved the project (and the team) so much that we donated a $100,000 for furthering development. They used the funds to hire a dev & help improve the Jupyter for all platforms.

Since then we've put Jupyter in Azure ML studio which combines a drag/drop ML canvas with that of a notebook. You can use it to analyze your data / build models /deploy to Azure.

As an offshoot of the above project, we wanted to give something back to the community, so we figured we'd instantiate it as a separate notebook-centric offering for dabblers, students, faculty, demoers, webinar/seminar speakers, etc.

And by "we", I mean a small group in Microsoft who cooked up the idea - if it turns out to be useful, we'll keep it going. If it's not, we'll shut it off. So far thought it looks like it's hit a chord - thousands of notebooks have been created just in the past month. Various schools are using it to teach cs101, eng101 courses, people are using it to demo their products/services (an executable doc page vs a static one), ...

Beyond this initial offering, we hope to add a suite of features both around and inside Jupyter. For example, we hope to be working w the core team to add debugging/profiling support soon. We also hope that the VSCode editor will be integrated for the JupyterLab environment. We'd love to hear your ideas!

https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab

That's a great notebook! Thanks for sharing.

Hi hatmatrix - Currently it's primarily a hosted jupyter service - you can view with no login, or create/run if you login. It does not modify Jupyter itself in any significant way. We hope to add various features in the coming year. In its current form it can be used as a scratchpad, for classes, webinars, conferences, etc. where you have say 100+ ppl that quickly need to follow a tutorial without spending time on installation (it has Anaconda sitting underneath Python).

[msft] Yep. Check out Jupyter Lab which tries address other scenarios. A lightweight IDE with notebook, file, editor, windowing support:

https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab

[msft] Guilty as charged. The GIF will be gone soon. Though it loads in < 1 sec for me (~20Mbps). Thanks!

[msft] Proper data support is coming. I believe it's meant as: if you upload a ton of data & seem to have abandoned it, it'll eventually go away. Admittedly vague, will be made more crisp in the faq. Thanks!

Hi folks - Thanks for taking a look at Azure notebooks. Here's some background info:

What is it?

It's an offshoot of Azure ML Studio which has Jupyter support. We asked the powers that be if we could also instantiate it also as a free service - "yes" was the answer.

Who is it aimed at?

Students, faculty, casual users, folks that want to give webinars, classrooms, etc & want to skip software install headaches.

What does it support?

Currently R, Py2, Py3, F#. Python is backed by the Anaconda distro. More kernels will be added based on user feedback. Environment runs on Linux/docker.

Is it free?

Yes.

I need an account?

Not to view content (a la nbviewer). To run, create notebooks, etc. you need a Microsoft account (xbox, outlook, hotmail, ...). Sample notebook to view (click on the eyeball):

https://notebooks.azure.com/library/LIGOOpenScienceCenter

I don't like the UI!

We are admittedly not UI people and are grateful to our summer intern for the current UI! Please send feedback to nbhelp@microsoft.com and we'll improve it!

[EDIT: additions:]

Can I get a bash prompt, install linux pkgs?

Yes! In Jupyter, you can click on Terminal & you are in bash (ubuntu).

Can I use pip, install.packages(), nuget, ... ?

In Python/R/F#, you can use each environment's pkg mgr to install pkgs. EG "!pip install pkg", install.packages("ggplot2"), etc. See Py examples here:

https://notebooks.azure.com/library/Intro_To_CNTK

Is my environments saved?

Currently, your notebooks are saved based on your login. Proper data, load github repo, etc. support is coming.

For a bit more info, please view the faq:

https://notebooks.azure.com/faq

Thanks! [msft]

Thanks for feedback. We hope to keep iterating on the UI in the coming year. We'd love to improve it based on your suggestions (we're admittedly weak on that front). nbhelp@microsoft.com.

[msft] You are quite correct that the REPL/cell paradigm has its pluses & minuses. That's why the follow on (Jupyter Lab), is addressing many of these issues. Check out:

https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab

As chupapuma said, we aren't UI folks and all feedback is welcome. We hope to update it gradually in the coming year :). The original UI was done by one of our summer interns. [EDIT] didn't want to make it sound like I'm blaming our intern - he was awesome, especially if you'd seen the previous rev!

Hi! Proper data support is coming soon. For now, you can link directly to blobs, github, etc.

[msft]

On behalf of the Python team @ Microsoft:

http://imgur.com/gallery/MWcxIMA

Congrats!

Python built into Windows 10, Azure CLI in Python, Python Tools for Visual Studio, Azure Jupyter Notebooks, ... exciting times for Python devs on the msft stack!

Yep!

Definitely - hence 'better pianist' vs 'better composer' :)

Haven't read the article yet, but I hope they mention Charles Valentin Alkan. When Liszt heard him play, he declared he was a better pianist. That's saying something.

Samples of his writing:

https://youtu.be/QFXBbhutUsk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sotFMQRZCx0

if you are on Windows and want to try R and don't mind preview software, check out:

http://microsoft.github.io/RTVS-docs/

note that VS (PTVS) has a Jupyter mode. in tools/options for python, select ipython mode for repl:

https://github.com/Microsoft/PTVS/wiki/Using-IPython-with-PT...

note quite the cell by cell, markdown experience, but you get inline resizable graphs, !shell commands, etc. more integration is on its way. Same with VScode.

In case you use Visual Studio and want to write some R code, VS now has a free+oss plug-in for it:

RTVS v0.4 video overview: https://youtu.be/k1_6XLyhHbo

Docs: http://microsoft.github.io/RTVS-docs/