Polynote vs VS Code: a side-by-side comparison for 2024
Comparing two data science notebooks.
Polynote
Polynote is a different kind of notebook. It supports mixing multiple languages in one notebook, and sharing data between them seamlessly. It encourages reproducible notebooks with its immutable data model.
VS Code
Visual Studio Code is a lightweight but powerful source code editor. It supports working with Jupyter Notebooks natively, as well as through Python code files.
Polynote
VS Code
Setup
Is it managed?
Is it managed?
No, you must host it yourself
No, you must host it yourself
Can you self-host?
Can you self-host?
You can self-host (setup in hours)
You can self-host (setup in hours)
Features
Is it Jupyter compatible?
Is it Jupyter compatible?
Not Jupyter-compatible
Jupyter-compatible
Programming languages
Programming languages
Scala
Python
Jupyter languages (e.g. Python, R)
What kind of data sources can you connect to?
What kind of data sources can you connect to?
Unknown
Connect with Jupyter libraries (e.g. SQLAlchemy, psycopg2)
What kind of data visualization can you do?
What kind of data visualization can you do?
Unknown
Jupyter data visualization (e.g. Matplotlib, Altair, Plotly)
Reactivity
Reactivity
No reactivity, you decide the execution order
No reactivity, you decide the execution order
Notebook scheduling
Notebook scheduling
Notebook scheduling with additional tools
Notebook scheduling with additional tools
Management
Reproducibility
Reproducibility
With effort, you can make reproducible environments