Jupyter Notebooks quick start

Jupyter Notebooks: A Practical Guide (Browser & VS Code)

This guide shows two great ways to use Jupyter: in your browser (JupyterLab/Notebook server) and inside VS Code. It includes setup, daily workflow, productivity tips, and troubleshooting.

0) Quick glossary

• Kernel: the compute engine (e.g., a Python interpreter) that runs your code.
• Environment: an isolated set of packages + interpreter (conda/mamba/venv/uv).
• Notebook: a .ipynb file with code, text, outputs.

Using Jupyter in the browser

• Open your terminal
• Navigate to the folder where you have a Jupyter Notebook or where you want to create a new one
• Activate the Conda environment you need (for this course it should be conda activate d2l)
• run the following command jupyter notebook <name_of_the_notebook.ipynb>

Alternatively you can use Jupyter Notebooks in code editors like Visual Studio Code.

Core workflow

• Shift+Enter: run cell; A/B: insert cell above/below; M/Y: markdown/code.
• Use Command Palette (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+C) to find actions.
• Save frequently (Ctrl/Cmd+S).