This is my preferred way to work as well. Some techniques to address what you are missing:
1. Only checking in semantic differences (not output, timestamps, etc.):
Use the `jupytext`-extension [0] to seamlessly pair you notebook with an lightweight markup version of the input only (which can be used to generate full notebook).
2. Being able to switch between text editor and notebook interface
As other have mentioned, there are integrations for multiple editors.
Another approach is to move the central code out to a python module which you edit in a text editor, and then use the `%autoreload` magic [1] to reimport that module whenever you execute a cell in the notebook.
1. Only checking in semantic differences (not output, timestamps, etc.):
Use the `jupytext`-extension [0] to seamlessly pair you notebook with an lightweight markup version of the input only (which can be used to generate full notebook).
2. Being able to switch between text editor and notebook interface
As other have mentioned, there are integrations for multiple editors.
Another approach is to move the central code out to a python module which you edit in a text editor, and then use the `%autoreload` magic [1] to reimport that module whenever you execute a cell in the notebook.
[0]: https://jupytext.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install.html [1]: https://ipython.readthedocs.io/en/stable/config/extensions/a...