Introduction to Polyglot Notebook
Documenting a system is key to being able to work with it efficiently. However, there are different ways to document, from specific API docs, written documentation describing the system, unified modeling language (UML), and even tests can be considered part of the documentation. Systems change, so documentation needs to change with them. Good documentation should also include code that shows how to work with various parts of the system.
Scenario: Building a living documentation for my development team
As part of a development team, you build and maintain many different codebases, from backend to frontend and even a mobile-app project. You often switch among projects to address a bug or to build a new feature. To make both onboarding and context switching easier, you want to find a way to document your systems so it becomes easier to maintain them.
After completing this module, you'll be able to:
- Explain why you should use Polyglot Notebooks.
- Create and run Notebooks.
- Use features like variable sharing and commands to combine frontend and backend and mermaid to render flowcharts and diagrams.
Learning objectives
By completing this module, you'll learn to document your IT systems not only with static text, but also with code that you can run to create living documentation.
Prerequisites
To get started with Polyglot Notebooks, you need to:
- Install the latest .NET SDK,
- Install Polyglot Notebooks as an extension on Visual Studio Code. From there, you can create and run Notebooks and do much more.