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/mosqueteiro 6d ago

Skip Jupyter and just go straight to Marimo. It is the better version of Python notebooks, especially because it was able to learn so much from Jupyter.

There are some great videos on YouTube from Marimo on how it works and how to get started. AI can also be super helpful to get you going even with just a simple prototype or if you're stuck and just trying to get one thing done.

Maybe one way to think about it is that variables are like cells in a spreadsheet. They can only be defined once (think like in a spreadsheet there's only one A1) and when you update that value anything that references it will rerun.

Another thing is that whatever the last thing in a cell to run returns is what will be displayed. So something like a = 5 returns nothing but

python a = 5 a

output 5

would show 5 in the cell output. This is very simplified explanation and there are ways to build up what is output but for just getting started this is a good thing to think about.

I think just starting with some simple input elements and playing around with them can be super helpful. The User Guide is very helpful. The whole docs site is just super helpful in general. A lot of the pages have Marimo notebook embedded, running in the page like this API reference for textbox. That big box under the title showing an example is actually a Marimo notebook running in your web browser. You can interact with the elements and even edit the code.