I would pay double if the app produced was a progressive web app.
Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python
131–140 of 207 posts
Re: Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python
#132Who owns the source code?
Re: Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
I will only leave it and never pay if something terrible happens: the price is jacked up, service suffers or I create such a great thing that I need commodity pricing. But its worse than that: if I don't have the security that I can leave, I won't dedicate time to use this. I am happy to pay for the convenience and to try to create MVPs or proofs of service etc. Anyway, it hardly matters what I think. Imagine what al…
It's ok, you are probably no the target for the service. If you want control, you don't use a closed source saas RAD. I would not use the product for myself. I would hate been locked down. But I can see the value for others. For some, having one easy but clear solution is the important value.
Customers aren't that black and white. I used to work for a SaaS company, and having the option of requesting the source and copy of the database was crucial to land quite a few of our contracts.
That said, I agree with you that it's probably not their best approach right now. Even if it pains me to say so :)
Re: Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have any plan to open source the platform?
Honestly, we would absolutely love to open-source it! The issue is that we're a bootstrapped start-up, and it's rather difficult to make open source pay the bills, even if it becomes huge (see, eg, Docker's troubles). By charging for the product, we can claim some of the value we create, and be sustainable so the platform stays around.
Perhaps a clear migration path from Anvil-infused Python to vanilla Python / JavaScript would be a reasonable approach. If for one reason or another I have to move my apps elsewhere I'd would like an easy way to do so rather than being permanently locked into a specific vendor.
Re: Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python
#135So I've been working on a python flask web app in part time/spare time for my business for almost two years (in addition to running a company doing several million USD in sales over that time without the app.) In that two years, I've tracked my programming time with wakatime and I'm at >1000hrs now, more than 25 full-time 40hr work weeks of actual coding time. I'm running the app on a dedicated GPU server, as part of…
My personal experience with Flask has led me to believe it's many times easier to expand on vanilla Flask then it is to try and incorporate any of the flask-* libraries.
Having just built a boilerplate that integrates a bunch of the flask-* libraries, I think the key really is that you need to be careful about how you organize your code: it's important to be able to control the order of registering the various extensions you're using relative to when you're registering your app code. Otherwise you're going to end up in circular-dependency import hell. Buried in the documentation is a hint on how to do this correctly with application factories[0], but if you don't know that's there, it's very hard to just stumble upon how to correctly organize everything.
Re: Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
I will only leave it and never pay if something terrible happens: the price is jacked up, service suffers or I create such a great thing that I need commodity pricing. But its worse than that: if I don't have the security that I can leave, I won't dedicate time to use this. I am happy to pay for the convenience and to try to create MVPs or proofs of service etc. Anyway, it hardly matters what I think. Imagine what al…
It's ok, you are probably no the target for the service. If you want control, you don't use a closed source saas RAD. I would not use the product for myself. I would hate been locked down. But I can see the value for others. For some, having one easy but clear solution is the important value.
I don't think being locked down to a service is that important in this case. I see Anvil as a potentially valuable tool to create prototypes, to quickly iterate on an idea... then when it is validated, you can build it with more conventional (and safer in terms of future) tools.
Re: Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python
#137So I've been working on a python flask web app in part time/spare time for my business for almost two years (in addition to running a company doing several million USD in sales over that time without the app.) In that two years, I've tracked my programming time with wakatime and I'm at >1000hrs now, more than 25 full-time 40hr work weeks of actual coding time. I'm running the app on a dedicated GPU server, as part of…
I would bet that you would need about the same amount of time nomatter what technology you used. The catch is this sentence: > I literally just spent about a month hacking on flask-security to get the login/email-confirmations/email templates/argon2-hashing/2-factor-auth the way I need it . I don't know Anvil but I am sure it has a specific way of dealing with login/signup/... - just like every other framework. And i…
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Re: Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was thinking more in terms of ameliorating the risk of building a successful small business on this and them going out of business after gorging themselves on VC money and having a heart attack.
You could probably rewrite your thing in Django or similar in the event of that. Given that the majority of web apps don't turn into successful small business it might be a good way to try stuff.
My use case is closer to being a small dev shop doing webapps for other people. If they go out of business, I would have tons of Django/whatever work all of a sudden, but lots of pissed off customers when I don't have time to rewrite them all. Plus I (morally) would need to warn them about this risk when pitching/selling them, which would probably put a sizeable dent in sales: "Also, there's a chance that this completely separate company stops supporting their product and we have to charge you for a complete rewrite of your app".
Re: Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python
#139So I've been working on a python flask web app in part time/spare time for my business for almost two years (in addition to running a company doing several million USD in sales over that time without the app.) In that two years, I've tracked my programming time with wakatime and I'm at >1000hrs now, more than 25 full-time 40hr work weeks of actual coding time. I'm running the app on a dedicated GPU server, as part of…
I would bet that you would need about the same amount of time nomatter what technology you used. The catch is this sentence: > I literally just spent about a month hacking on flask-security to get the login/email-confirmations/email templates/argon2-hashing/2-factor-auth the way I need it . I don't know Anvil but I am sure it has a specific way of dealing with login/signup/... - just like every other framework. And i…
I'd take the other side of that bet ;)
Anvil's built in "Users" service is incredibly simple and un-magical (user records are just database rows, and you can reimplement vanilla password login in four lines). This makes hacking on it an awful lot easier than some magically injected extension that needs to be configured just so.
(Check out the API: https://anvil.works/doc#users)
Re: Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
These tools are for simple CRUD apps for people who aren't necessarily strong developers to begin with but need to put together something anyway. That's why the demos focus on speed and only ever show the tiniest of applications.
I'd dispute that! There are much larger applications built on Anvil; it's just hard to build a two-week project for a demo video, and harder still to build a two-month one ;) We're starting to post some larger examples (check out our "download portal" example at https://anvil.works/learn#examples - I'm also working on a video series building a SaaS app over the course of a few hours). But the biggest apps are, of cou…
What's the largest, most complex application running on Anvil today?