Summary of user demos for Kedro VS Code 0.2.0

[noklam]

Context

I spoke to a few person and demo the unreleased version of Kedro Extension 0.2.0. I mostly ask people questions like:

• Have you used the extension before? If not I start with a walkthrough
• Have you used %load_node before, if so ask how's the experience
  • Ask if using the flowchart to "debug" a node make sense? - %load_node integration with flowchart - One Click debugging experience #60
• Told them about the upcoming kedro viz --lite solve their problem

User	Background	Use extension before?	Used %load_node?	comments about extension	%load node comments	Other comments
User 1	DE	Installed, not used	Yes	- Filtering / subpipeline not realistic for complex pipeline, debugging	Used it before, very useful for debugging. Suggested %load_pipeline because for DE pipeline, error are inherited from upstream nodes, not necessary from the node that throw error	Kedro Viz Run pipeline,
User 2	DE	Installed, not used	No	- Preview dataset on hover (VSCode) - extension validation should throw error for dependencies. - Need filtering for the flowchart webview	- Didn't know %load_node exists, like it and will be useful	Have an idea about Kedro creating scafoldding test (maybe integated with extension), because project is tighted, would save a lot of time to create these tests and let engineer to fill in the implementation.
User 3	not working, DE	Installed, not used because it's not working	Yes	Flowchart + debug makes sense, Kedro Viz run state + stats.json	Don't know about it but like it. Would be more useful if can run from node where data is not saved.	- Would be great if navigation + hover works for VS Code Notebook too
User 4	Upgraded to 0.19, DS, Vertical, long term Kedro user	Installed, not used	Yes	Extension breaks on the project	Likes debugging function with %load_node, didn't know about it	- Refresher for Kedro as not aware of what changes/feature would be useful.
User 5	Windows user, Local dev mostly + Databricks run, DS, Not a traditional engineer, prefer local dev, notebook/print/rerun workflow over debugger	Installed, tried to use but something breaks in early version	Yes	Finds hovering over elements beautiful, some features break on Windows	- Like the idea that if flowchart show run states and a "one-click" debug experience with flowchart - Very useful as his role are mainly reviewing code
User 6	Heavy Kedro User DS	Installed but not use as not working in Kedro project recently	Yes	How would it works for namespace?	Like %load_node but end up doing something similar himself (forgot the reason why he cannot use %load_node). -	"Seeing Kedro pipeline running in progress with a visualisation, click on a failed node, re-run from there to make it work is super awesome"	Runner is an abstractionn that is powerful but not beginner friendly, bring the execution explicitly into a notebook cell is helpful

[noklam]

• Several bugs
• Extension not working properly for Windows #102
• Extension assume spaceflights structure which fails on more complex project #103
• Pipeline filtering is important to make the feature usable for any med-size projects.

ideas:

• %load_node from closest persisted node
  • %load_node, seems working fine for DS mostly, DE encountered the issue from upstream node more often and thus the ask for %load_pipeline
  • %load_node integration with flowchart - One Click debugging experience #60 seems to be a good idea as early validation from conversations. Though user immediately ask if it works for two-way sync (notebook change reflected in pipeline automatically)
• Regardless of load_node or load_pipeline, fixing the problem that %load_node only works for persisted dataset is important as many of the users have the same ask. This will also solve the problem we discussed earlier about slicing pipeline
• Ideas about Improving testing in Kedro
• Many people installed, try using it but stopped because different kind of issues.
• Hover preview show the data schema too (using stats.json maybe?)

Mentioned some more challenging issues:

• Clicking on a dataset node in kedro-viz doesn't navigate to code when the dataset is defined as dataset factory #122
• Support for namespaced pipelines #51
• Add navigation support for OmegaConfig Syntax #8
• Autocompletion support for Notebook #13

[astrojuanlu]

Should we transfer this issue to the vscode-kedro repo @noklam ?

[noklam]

Yes!