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Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python

anvil.works

191–200 of 207 posts

Re: Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python

#191
post #189

I love it. But seeing this now, in 2017, is a bit depressing to me. For the last 15 years Microsoft has been putting out the same RAD tools, but based on ASP.NET/C#/Visual Studio. Things like drop-in provider-based OAuth, editing versioned database projects, WYSIWYG UI, etc. Publishing to the web, even the flow of clicking on a button to edit its handler looks like it was based directly on Winforms which is a 12 year…

Someone please create something like this but with React. It makes development faster but retains the flexibility.

Just do it! :)

Re: Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That I can talk about publicly? Probably https://lightningai.com/ . Their control panel drives companies' entire online marketing operation - creative, targeting, performance, and more - across multiple advertising services. That's a whole lotta UI. Their back end drives the advertising platforms' APIs (eg Google and Facebook), and it all hooks into great big machine learning operations that run on big beefy servers…

So, the UI/front0end of their app was created with and runs on Anvil, but the backend is entirely under their control? That's interesting. Very interesting.

Their backend is partially inside, partially outside Anvil (eg I believe the campaign management backend runs in our hosted server modules, but the compute-intensive machine learning is offloaded). And it's all under their control - it's their code!

The wonderful thing about the Uplink is that the boundary between "inside Anvil" and "outside Anvil" can be very fuzzy, because you use the same APIs. (See my "escape hatch" post above)

Re: Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python

#193
That looks like a fantastic app to be working on.

Also, a great job with the demo video explaining what it is.

The only feedback I could give for now is that the "Free" plan should include some extra feature from the paid plans (e.g. User Authentication, Custom Domains, etc.) as it seems way to basic and the first paid plan is quite expensive.

I may sound like a cheapskate but you'll pull in the right crowd if you tax other metrics like traffic/bandwidth/cpu/ram/etc.

Re: Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python

#194

Hi there! Founder here, slightly gobsmacked to see this top of HN. Do feel free to ask me any questions about the platform :) We also have a bunch of tutorial-cum-demo videos at: https://anvil.works/learn#tutorials

Wow this is pretty impressive! Python everywhere is a big advantage and the way the frontend, backend and database are integrated appears quite seamless. My question is about scaling - what are some large apps on this platform and how big do you think these apps can get in terms of db size and qps?

Thanks!

Our infrastructure is all on AWS and designed to scale horizontally, so we're pretty confident we can handle whatever traffic you throw at your app. (Ask about our dedicated-resource hosting plans!)

As for examples, it's a bit Catch-22. Our smaller customers, you haven't heard of; and our largest ones, we can't talk about in public. And a lot of it is internal/intranet stuff anyway.

One customer has kindly allowed us to talk a bit about their app - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15589020

Re: Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python

#196

So 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…

awesome stuff, I never tracked my time but would have done similar hours over 2 years on iOS/Android/Python-Flask & Flask-Security. Doing a rebuild now I have scaled and have a team and am using Auth0, and thankfully I am grateful for the abstraction!

Re: Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python

#197
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are basically asking them: "I love your work. Please add an option so I can use it, benefit from it, then leave and never pay you again."

Yes, that's true. But that does describe Rails. A pure Python web framework, integrated, with a python to javascript transpiler is very likely to emerge, but I can say with almost total certainty that it will have to be open source. I don't know any actual numbers, but I think DHH and basecamp almost certainly profited from the popularity of Rails. That's probably up for grabs, since integrated web environments in no…

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Re: Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python

#198
post #163

I love it. But seeing this now, in 2017, is a bit depressing to me. For the last 15 years Microsoft has been putting out the same RAD tools, but based on ASP.NET/C#/Visual Studio. Things like drop-in provider-based OAuth, editing versioned database projects, WYSIWYG UI, etc. Publishing to the web, even the flow of clicking on a button to edit its handler looks like it was based directly on Winforms which is a 12 year…

I am the developer of Solvent IDE, which attempts to tackle this problem in a comprehensive way, ie from the ground up as a platform: http://codesolvent.com/web-dev/ It is not as easy a problem as it seems...beyond the technical hurdle, a major obstacle is developers :) While you like this paradigm, I am afraid a lot of developers generally scuff at these types of products.

Regarding...

http://blog.codesolvent.com/2017/03/what-happened-to-sharing...

... making it onto the front page of HN isn't some mysterious process, it's as a result of people who are viewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newest when you posted an article voting it up. Due to the fast churn rate on the 'New' page (and to the lower traffic on the New page) it often a matter of luck if a post reaches the front page, but what it isn't is some kind of conspiracy to exclude new entrants.

That aside, your tech looks interesting. What licence(s) is it released under?

Re: Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"users don't want to kill themselves during interaction" - touché :) I agree with you, but taking the create-react-app example again - I can very quickly scaffold a react app with necessary toolsets, built on top of webpack. This gets me up and running without having to mess with webpack config. At some point, I need to break out of these opinionated guardrails and do my own thing. At that point create react app has…

As a rule, I'm not a fan of the "Eject button" pattern. It's an admission of defeat. It says, "because you needed one advanced feature, I am now dumping you into the Wild West I was previously protecting you from. Good luck!" A much more interesting approach is to acknowledge that your system will always be incomplete, and provide ways of using more complex external features without abandoning simplicity for the othe…

Hi, cool project, really. As a backend developer I often feel stranded when going about web app frontends. And it's so hard to find WYSIWYG editors that don't suck. What about supporting Java for the coding, though? Is this going to happen at some point?

Re: Anvil: full stack web apps built only with Python

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you should really do is also sell anvil in a form that makes it possible to host on premise or in AWS or somewhere else. Even if you charge a 1000$for that people would pay up. You don’t need to open source everything but you can sell the compiled c files instead with installations and support guidelines. I would love to use it but if I cannot control the infrastructure I feel my hands are tied.

We do exactly that! ( https://anvil.works/blog/anvil-on-site ) Installing and running it is typically a single 'docker-compose' command. If you're interested in this option, please do drop us an email at sales@anvil.works.

But unlike the other plans the pricing is not transparent.. even non enterprise customers may want this option.
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