Looks similar to Nitro https://nitro.h2o.ai/ and Wave https://wave.h2o.ai/ - both open source. Nitro already works with WebAssembly via Pyodide. (Author here)
Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
191–200 of 329 posts
Re: Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
So ruby has a JS transpiler - opal - https://opalrb.com/ I tried using it a little bit but the reality is if you need JS to make your app more interactable it's really worth it to just learn some JS. As soon as you need something complex the extra layer of abstraction just gets in the way and becomes more of a headache, and if you don't need anything complex then you don't need a fancy JS solution in the first place.…
I'm working on https://github.com/mayu-live/framework which is 100% server side Ruby. It's kinda like React/Preact, but server side, and Ruby. No JavaScript required (it's not even supported).
That's pretty neat. In general I think stuff like this is cool and works pretty well as a starter kit for simple CRUD apps if you don't already know Rails + JS, but like I said in my OP, once your app gets more complex, you hire some UX designers and you try to make your app more interactive, not having easy JS access makes it hard to do interesting things.
So could be useful for small projects but I wouldn't pick a solution like this for projects I would want to grow larger
Re: Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
#193Love anything that helps developing apps without knowledge of react or typescript etc.
I’ve played quite a bit with Streamlit, and I know lots of demo apps are built with Gradio. These two tools also aim to help build apps with only python. I remember my Streamlit app code turned into a mess when trying to manage state to support multiple user interactions.
Any comparisons with these frameworks?
Thanks
Re: Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
#194Looks cool. I am not a web dev. How much Javascript/React/NextJS do I need to learn to build rich custom UI components+behaviour? Can I do it in entirely in Python?
Yes its entirely in python. No Javascript/React/NextJS needed.
Do you need to know Javascript to use externa library like Plotly?
Re: Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
actually, as per the docs the framework is converting python code to Javascript. So you would need to JS skills to debug. Most of the problems in web front have been solved in JS (think CSS styles, state management) re-writting it in python would be pain, especially when everything compiles to js
State management hasn't really been solved. Hence the whole debate about signals vs no signals last week. :)
I didn't catch that and can't find it, got a link?
Re: Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
#196You could make about a trillion dollars if, instead of asking people to write Python, you just gave them a WYSIWYG and let them build web apps by pointing and clicking like in MS Publisher/Powerpoint. Literally everyone in the world would buy it to make their own web pages. I get that nerds like to write code, but it is really depressing that we still can't just point and click and share content on the internet, we n…
Nerds like to write code, as you put it, because it's easier than the alternative. Seen from the other side, it's amazing to what lengths people will go to avoid learning some very light scripting. Historically the 4GL/nocode/lowcode movement has been a miserable failure, and not for lack of attempts to push that idea down people's throats.
> it's amazing to what lengths people will go to avoid learning some very light scripting
It's amazing that a person would want to do more work for a computer, rather than the other way around.
> Historically the 4GL/nocode/lowcode movement has been a miserable failure
Because they were created by people with no imagination, to fit into a paradigm that is inherently flawed but makes lots of money.
MS Publisher was created 32 years ago. It still works great. Anyone can sit down and create and share mixed media by pointing and clicking. But all the techies in the world can't fathom how to make the same exact thing work over a hyper text protocol. Because they have no imagination, and prefer to play with their legos rather than make useful tools that regular humans can use.
The only reason web pages are so complicated is the simpler and easier to use solution isn't sexy. Techies want their tech to be complicated, because they like all the bells and whistles and knobs and syntax and grammar and frameworks. It gratifies their need to keep reconfiguring their legos to make new toys. They like the ego boost of believing that all this is necessary and they are some kind of geniuses doing great work. When really it's all just a poorly designed layer cake of crap that keeps them in money to buy more toys.
It's like how cities are full of streets designed for 2-ton balls of steel and wire and a continuously exploding mechanical machine. The city's design - and the vehicles - are needlessly complex, expensive, and resource-wasting. But we don't fix it, because fixing it is more work than maintaining the status quo, and there's money in the status quo.
Re: Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I haven't looked into this one deeply yet, so I'm not sure what the differences are exactly. But there are many existing, broadly similar, projects. I see this as a solution to "I want to make an interactive website, and I don't want to touch the JS ecosystem at all and/or I really prefer python-specific libraries". This is my position exactly, so I sort of keep track of what's available. From that perspective,…
This is a futile pursuit simply because you are creating a layer of abstraction over JS using another dynamic language so there's no real gain other than syntactic sugar.
The frontend gets compiled to JS, not unlike how TS gets compiled to JS.
Re: Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
#198My opinion on this : * Web with python : yes, make sense, python is very friendly it's kind of the closest to no-code we can do * No benchmark : ouch, no way I am touching this without knowing, at least in the big picture, what to expect * Front-end : so this is a wrapper of Chackra UI which is itself a wrapper of React (which is the slowest framework out there) -> not really what I am looking for. I can understand t…
If you don't mind, can you clarify what is the fast front-end framework that you mentioned above?
Re: Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
#199Looks really promising. Have you consider some sort of framework construct to more clearly denote where code runs? Might help readability and make it easier to understand perf implications of code vs the model you have now.
Re: Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
actually, as per the docs the framework is converting python code to Javascript. So you would need to JS skills to debug. Most of the problems in web front have been solved in JS (think CSS styles, state management) re-writting it in python would be pain, especially when everything compiles to js
State management hasn't really been solved. Hence the whole debate about signals vs no signals last week. :)
XState is the bee's knees if you're writing any Javascript