#530: anywidget: Jupyter Widgets made easy

For years, building interactive widgets in Python notebooks meant wrestling with toolchains, platform quirks, and a mountain of JavaScript machinery. Most developers took one look and backed away slowly. Trevor Manz decided that barrier did not need to exist. His idea was simple: give Python users just enough JavaScript to unlock the web’s interactivity, without dragging along the rest of the web ecosystem. That idea became anywidget, and it is quickly becoming the quiet connective tissue of modern interactive computing. Today we dig into how it works, why it has taken off, and how it might change the way we explore data. Episode sponsors Seer: AI Debugging, Code TALKPYTHON PyCharm, code STRONGER PYTHON Talk Python Courses Links from the show Trevor on GitHub: github.com anywidget GitHub: github.com Trevor's SciPy 2024 Talk: www.youtube.com Marimo GitHub: github.com Myst (Markdown docs): mystmd.org Altair: altair-viz.github.io DuckDB: duckdb.org Mosaic: uwdata.github.io ipywidgets: ipywidgets.readthedocs.io Tension between Web and Data Sci Graphic: blobs.talkpython.fm Quak: github.com Walk through building a widget: anywidget.dev Widget Gallery: anywidget.dev Video: How do I anywidget?: www.youtube.com PyCharm + PSF Fundraiser: pycharm-psf-2025 code STRONGER PYTHON Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com Episode #530 deep-dive: talkpython.fm/530 Episode transcripts: talkpython.fm Theme Song: Developer Rap 🥁 Served in a Flask 🎸: talkpython.fm/flasksong ---== Don't be a stranger ==--- YouTube: youtube.com/@talkpython Bluesky: @talkpython.fm Mastodon: @[e-mail] X.com: @talkpython Michael on Bluesky: @mkennedy.codes Michael on Mastodon: @[e-mail] Michael on X.com: @mkennedy