Ask HN: I just want to have fun programming again

>If I could write an app in a good static-compiled language that did not require extraneous expertise in CSS but that shipped on a web page and looked good using tools only in that language, with good interop with an HTML Canvas, that would be one possibility, but it is again a compromise -- no easy multithreading, dealing with all the front-end baggage to bundle or deploy such an app, etc.

Rust/Yew may be what you're looking for. It takes all the good ideas of web UIs (namely declarative FRP) and works cross platform natively, as well as compiling to WASM for the browser.

https://yew.rs/docs/concepts/function-components

Pure JavaScript is fun and simple. If you want a hobby project, ditch all the frameworks, and go vanilla.

I started https://wordsandbuttons.online/ looking for something fun and meaningful to do. I wanted to practice interactive writing and wanted to involve the bare minimum of technology to go forward. So I use rudimentary HTML for layout, JavaScript for interactive illustrations and UI elements, and Python for massive code changes. I have a bit of CSS, but I don't use "cascading" feature of it so whenever I want to change a style overall, I write a Python script for that. On the plus side, every page is entirely self-contained, and my CSS is outrageously simple.

There are no dependencies not external no internal, so the workflow is entirely stress free. Well, rather stress isolated. If I break anything, I know that the breaking change is exactly in the thing I am currently working on and not anywhere else.

If you don't care about productivity and want to enjoy programming with as little tools and dependencies as possible, vanilla JavaScript is the way to go.

plus https://github.com/berty/go-orbit-db for a distributed p2p db

Maybe not a popular opinion, but after I bought a new MacBook, I decided to try out some iOS and Mac apps development. After years of frontend and backend development, it felt like fun thing to do. No more endless npm modules, css files, javascript quirks. Things just work.

Write it as a CLI first, if you can. Python with rich (for output formatting) is a great choice. But if you have appropriate tools, working with what you're comfortable with is a great choice too.

Until recently, I was in a similar situation. I had an idea of what I wanted to do. I had some prototype code written up as a web app in JS. It was going to be this beautiful thing that would help so many people.

But then I realized it was too much pressure. I wanted this for myself more than anything else. So I sat down and hammered it out in python in an afternoon. (Full disclosure, python is my main language, and I already knew exactly what this thing needed to do. I also found a library that did the Hard Part for me.)

And the best part: when I tell certain people about what I built, they don't care that it's a janky CLI. They're just happy they don't have to build/commission it themselves.

Embrace jankiness and get something working. You'll have fun.