DeepNote and Replit: Best Browser-Based IDE for Python Data Science?
How to take your development experience entirely to the cloud.
Quick Intro
Today I want to focus on how to switch to an entirely browser/cloud based computing environment. The point of this discussion is how to take your Data Science workflow to the browser entirely. I keep specifying browser and not cloud because cloud-based solutions like GCP, AWS, or Azure exist to provide cloud-based computing environments. The problem is, all of these platforms require some sort of remote-access either by some software or via ssh in the terminal. The goal of today’s talk is to have a setup that will work ANYWHERE, on ANY machine, without worrying about a SINGLE DEPENDENCY. In other words, a complete development environment accessible through any browser.
Alright, without further ado, let’s get started!
If you are interested in a Python IDE comparison, checkout my other article:
TLDR: Use DeepNote for your notebooks, reporting, and visualizations. Use Replit for making packages and web services.
Keep reading for more on each platform!
DeepNote
DeepNote is an amazing platform for web-based data science work. They provide a familiar notebook interface that most data scientists will feel right at home with. Think Jupyter Lab but a little smoother notebook experience. While you won’t have as numerous customization options as far as notebook extensions go, DeepNote provides instant collaboration to projects, shared projects, custom environments, and publishing. They also provide database support, SQL cell execution, and integrations with many popular softwares including GitHub, AWS, GCP, and MongoDB. For more information you can checkout their docs!
“DeepNote is an absolute game changer for data scientists looking to work without requiring custom hardware AND, more importantly, enables the easiest collaboration with other team members I’ve ever seen in a notebook.”
Replit
Replit is a very similar project to DeepNote in that in offers a browser-based IDE with collaboration (what they call Multiplayer), VCS integrations (via Github, but they are working on their own VCS), database support, and publishing. I admit to not being as familiar with Replit as Deepnote since I do most of my work in notebooks, but I love using Replit to mock up websites, backends, and play with new languages like Golang. The benefit of Replit is that it is a full blown IDE with autocompletion, linting, terminals/consoles, and supports a vast array of languages, not just Python. Furthermore, with the recent introduction of “Always on Repls”, you can even host your project DIRECTLY FROM YOUR CODEBASE. This was an eye opener for me as it practically removes the entire deployment stage of projects! For more information, checkout their features. Replit also comes with community built project templates to help you get started on a new project quickly!
If you use Jupyter + VS Code / PyCharm locally, DeepNote + Replit can be your new browser friends!
Wrap Up
Well that’s it for today’s article, if you enjoyed it or want to move your programming experience to the browser please give one of these two platforms (or both!) a try. While they aren’t as customizable or extensible as a virtual machine, they are quite performant and, I think, will work for most users workflows.
