Programming in Nextjournal

Nextjournal offers an intuitive WYSIWYG interface for creating and publishing notebooks. The features covered in this article will make working with code and environments more convenient through the use of several powerful features.

Runtimes

A Nextjournal environment is a filesystem snapshot of the runtime, stored as a Docker image. It includes everything necessary to run valid code in its associated code cells.

A runtime is the execution of the environment, running within a Docker container. When running, a user can execute programs written in its associated code cells.

Here an active Python runner denoted by the green dot and a R runner, which has timed out, is denoted by the gray dot.

Error Messages

Error messages appear inline. Large messages can be collapsed by clicking show less.

address = {street: "1 Lincoln Drive", zip: }

address["zip"]

0.3s

Language:Python

Short error messages remain succinct.

ls /liszt 2> /dev/null

Language:Bash

While long error messages, like Clojure's enormous stack traces, default to a collapsed state. They can be expanded by clicking show more.

{:x :y 1}

0.4s

Language:Clojure

Autocomplete

Use the ↹ Tab key to hint packages, variables, methods, and functions.

This works in Python, R, Bash, Julia, Clojure, and ClojureScript.

It's best to use this while your runner is still running. Some language features may still autocomplete in an inactive runner. For example, R primitives like list are always available, but base functions like print are not:

get("list", envir = baseenv())

0.5s

Language:R

get("print", envir = baseenv())

0.6s

Language:R

Base Python classes do not need an active runner but functions do. Furthermore, imported packages will need an active runner to autocomplete in all languages.

For best results keep your runners active by executing code early and often!

Documentation

Documentation can called from the code cell or inline through a Nextjournal shortcut, ⇪Shift ↹ Tab.

Inline

Using the Nextjournal shortcut, ⇪Shift ↹ Tab:

Inline documentation works for Python, Julia, and R.

Code Cell

help(abs)

0.6s

Language:Python

Imported and Required Packages

The documentation shortcut, ⇪Shift ↹ Tab, works the same for the NamedTemporaryFile() function from the tempfile module as it does anywhere else in Python.

import tempfile 
help(tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile)

1.0s

Language:Python