Pluto.jl VS PlutoUI.jl

I thought that notebook based development and package based development were diametrically opposed in the past, but Pluto.jl notebooks have changed my mind about this.

A Pluto.jl notebook is a human readable Julia source file. The Pluto.jl package is itself developed via Pluto.jl notebooks.

https://github.com/fonsp/Pluto.jl

Also, the VSCode Julia plugin tooling has really expanded in functionality and usability for me in the past year. The integrated debugging took some work to setup, but is fast enough to drop into a local frame.

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/languages/julia

Julia is the first language I have achieved full life cycle integration between exploratory code to sharable package. It even runs quite well on my Android. 2023 is the first year I was able to solve a differential equation or render a 3D surface from a calculated mesh with the hardware in my pocket.

Re Julia there is also pluto.jl that is another notebook-like environment for julia. It's been a few years since I played with it but it looked cool, for example it handles state differently so you don't get into the same messes as with ipython notebooks. https://plutojl.org/

For this, Notebooks are often used. Julia offers a uniquely nice and interactive Pluto notebook for the web https://github.com/fonsp/Pluto.jl

I believe this is what Pluto sets out to do for Julia.

I used it as part of the “Computational Thinking” with Julia course a year or two back. Even then the beta software was very good and some of the demos the Pluto dev showed were nothing short of amazing

https://plutojl.org/

I think what you want is Pluto!

I like how Pluto.jl handles this:

> Pluto offers an environment where changed code takes effect instantly and where deleted code leaves no trace. Unlike Jupyter or Matlab, there is no mutable workspace, but rather, an important guarantee:

> At any instant, the program state is completely described by the code you see.

[1] https://github.com/fonsp/Pluto.jl

Pluto notebooks are distinct from Jupyter notebooks in that they are reactive: https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoUI.jl

An easy alternative is using a Pluto notebook with PlutoUI.jl. You can create input fields, sliders, check boxes, etc in a very easy way. It’s an easy and fast way to create a simple GUI.

ubuntu@vm1:~$ curl -fsSL https://install.julialang.org | sh - info: downloading installer Welcome to Julia! This will download and install the official Julia Language distribution and its version manager Juliaup. Juliaup will be installed into the Juliaup home directory, located at: /home/ubuntu/.juliaup The julia, juliaup and other commands will be added to Juliaup bin directory, located at: /home/ubuntu/.juliaup/bin This path will then be added to your PATH environment variable by modifying the profile files located at: /home/ubuntu/.bashrc /home/ubuntu/.profile Julia will look for a new version of Juliaup itself every 1440 seconds when you start julia. You can uninstall at any time with juliaup self uninstall and these changes will be reverted. ✔ Do you want to install with these default configuration choices? · Proceed with installation Now installing Juliaup Installing Julia 1.7.2+0 (x64). Julia was successfully installed on your system. Depending on which shell you are using, run one of the following commands to reload the the PATH environment variable: . /home/ubuntu/.bashrc . /home/ubuntu/.profile pkg> add https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoUI.jl Cloning git-repo `[https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoUI.jl`](https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoUI.jl`) Updating git-repo `[https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoUI.jl`](https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoUI.jl`) Resolving package versions... Installed Reexport ─────────────── v1.2.2 Installed IOCapture ────────────── v0.2.2 Installed AbstractPlutoDingetjes ─ v1.1.4 Installed JSON ─────────────────── v0.21.3 Installed Hyperscript ──────────── v0.0.4 Installed FixedPointNumbers ────── v0.8.4 Installed HypertextLiteral ─────── v0.9.3 Installed Parsers ──────────────── v2.3.0 Installed ColorTypes ───────────── v0.11.0 Updating `~/.julia/environments/v1.7/Project.toml` [7f904dfe] + PlutoUI v0.7.38 `[https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoUI.jl#main`](https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoUI.jl#main`) Updating `~/.julia/environments/v1.7/Manifest.toml` [6e696c72] + AbstractPlutoDingetjes v1.1.4 [3da002f7] + ColorTypes v0.11.0 [53c48c17] + FixedPointNumbers v0.8.4 [47d2ed2b] + Hyperscript v0.0.4 [ac1192a8] + HypertextLiteral v0.9.3 [b5f81e59] + IOCapture v0.2.2 [682c06a0] + JSON v0.21.3 [69de0a69] + Parsers v2.3.0 [7f904dfe] + PlutoUI v0.7.38 `[https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoUI.jl#main`](https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoUI.jl#main`) [189a3867] + Reexport v1.2.2 [a63ad114] + Mmap [2f01184e] + SparseArrays [10745b16] + Statistics Precompiling project... 10 dependencies successfully precompiled in 23 seconds (24 already precompiled)

I realize that, and there may be no rational reason for you to switch to a setup like mine. But, aside from avoiding such things a Wordpress exploits, my approach turned out to have other advantages. Over the years I added to my knowledge and taught myself how to provide things other than static files. Today my readers can use gnuplot in a Jupyter notebook, and interactive Pluto¹ notebooks backed by Julia running on a VPS. No canned solution exists for this, and in fact I had to work with the Pluto developers to iron out some kinks. This is only possible because I have total control over the servers. If you know will only ever want to serve static files, there are simpler options (with potential pitfalls). But those options are also limiting, in case one day you want to do something unusual.

[1] https://github.com/JuliaPluto/PlutoUI.jl

When you are using Pluto (https://github.com/fonsp/Pluto.jl ) instead of Juypter you can very easily combine plots with reactive UI elements (like sliders, selectors, etc. - see https://github.com/fonsp/PlutoUI.jl ) to allow interactive exploration of data.

The only thing I think really isn't covered is PlutoUI (https://github.com/fonsp/PlutoUI.jl), which you can find in a sample notebook in Pluto.