Computational notebooks: the benefits and pitfalls
Thoughtworks Technology Podcast
Thoughtworks
4.5 • 58 Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2021
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Computational notebooks — such as Jupyter and Databricks — have soared in popularity with data scientists thanks to the ease with which text, visualizations and code can be combined on a living document. But what works for the data scientist doesn’t always fit with developers’ needs. Productionizing notebooks is fraught with perils. Our podcast team explores how to use computational notebooks most effectively.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome everyone to the ThoughtWorks Technology podcast. |
| 0:08.1 | I'm one of your regular guests, Neil Ford, and I'm joined today by another of our regular |
| 0:12.5 | guest, Shabak. |
| 0:13.6 | Hi, Neil. |
| 0:14.7 | And we are here to talk today with two Davids about computational notebooks. So to try to keep this straight in people's mind, |
| 0:24.0 | we're going to refer to them as Dave, Dave, which is David Tan. So let's let him, let's hear |
| 0:30.6 | his voice. Hey, everyone. That's who you'll identify as Dave. And we also have David Johnson. |
| 0:36.8 | Hello, everybody. |
| 0:38.4 | So I'll let David give us his background at ThoughtWorks and then Dave can give his background |
| 0:43.5 | and we'll talk a bit about computational notebooks. |
| 0:45.6 | So David. |
| 0:46.6 | All right, thank you, Neil. |
| 0:47.9 | So I'm a data scientist at ThoughtWorks. |
| 0:49.3 | I've been here around eight years now. |
| 0:51.2 | In my first career, I was a cosmologist and I guess I first started working with |
| 0:56.0 | notebooks when I was in college. They were the Mathematica notebooks. And since I've used |
| 1:01.8 | notebooks a little bit, the Jupiter notebooks of the modern era. But yeah, I've worked in an article |
| 1:07.6 | recently on the Martin Fowler blog called Don't Put Data Science Notebooks into Production. |
| 1:12.6 | So perhaps you can see where I'm going with some of my arguments from the title. |
| 1:16.3 | But yeah, I'm happy to speak to you guys today. |
| 1:18.7 | Thanks. |
| 1:20.4 | Okay. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Thoughtworks, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Thoughtworks and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.