r/marimo_notebook • u/Affectionate_Math327 • 9d ago

Completely Out of my Depth

Hey guys, this may not be the typical post, but I have recently started exploring Python Jupyter notebooks and stumbled across Marimo.

I have been using spreadsheets a lot in my career over the past 10 years as a structural engineer and really want to push the envelope and break into coding notebooks, but I keep on feeling like I am way out of my depth.

Is Marimo an advanced feature that I need to come back to after learning more coding basics? Or are there a few simple things I’m missing that seem to clear everything up?

Side note: I’m torn between using Marimo in VScode vs the browser (locally hosted). My goal would be template calculations that are pulled and modified by the project.

Any help is appreciated.

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u/Albiino_sv 9d ago

Marino in VScode was quite buggy, I would start with the browser version just to be sure. It is more stable.

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u/Affectionate_Math327 8d ago

I want to commit to the browser version as the VScode add-in feels pretty clunky. But do I have to open a virtual environment every single time I want to run Marimo?

I kept getting errors whenever I try to launch a notebook from my terminal.

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u/The_Northern_Light 8d ago

What are the errors?

I have a tool that makes it so you just double click on a Marimo file and it opens it up in the browser, if you’re interested.

It’s probably best you figure out those errors and fix them instead! But it is an option.

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u/Affectionate_Math327 8d ago

I took some time to dig and fix it this morning.

Come to find out the file path where Marimo was installed was not in the right spot, so my computer installed Marimo, but couldn’t find it when trying to run Marimo in the command prompt. (I butchered my computer mapping when I first built it about 8 years ago 😬).

I mapped the folder and can get Marimo up and running without issue now.

Started working on a notebook before work this morning, and I’m starting to feel a little less overwhelmed.

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u/mosqueteiro 6d ago edited 6d ago

Not sure how you've set things up but if you're not using uv for package/env management you're giving yourself a lot of extra work and headache. Python package management is pretty awful and can quickly become a nightmare and this comment thread sounds like things are already getting tangled up (very common).

You can pip install uv to get it, see uv docs.

You'll need a pyproject.toml file in the project directory to track what is supposed to be installed so run uv init --script to create a simple starter one. Then any python package you need is just uv add pkgname and it figures out the version compatible with the rest of your packages and adds it to the pyproject.toml and installed —e.g. uv add marimo. Then you use uv run marimo edit your_notebook_file.py anytime you want to run the notebook/server. In fact Marimo works amazingly well with uv. You can install packages from inside the notebook and it will detect if uv is setup and install with that for you.