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Show HN: Dropbase – Build internal web apps with just Python

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Re: Show HN: Dropbase – Build internal web apps with just Python

#33

Post by soperj »

kelvinzhang wrote: post #30

We definitely need more ways to build quick web UIs for Python code. Looks sick!

You have 6 comments from your account and one of them is this:

> I'm one of the engineers behind Dropbase.

So I hope this isn't the first time you've seen this.

Re: Show HN: Dropbase – Build internal web apps with just Python

#34

Post by jimmyechan »

soperj wrote: post #33
kelvinzhang wrote: post #30

We definitely need more ways to build quick web UIs for Python code. Looks sick!

You have 6 comments from your account and one of them is this: > I'm one of the engineers behind Dropbase. So I hope this isn't the first time you've seen this.

I can confirm all our engineers have seen this product before launching it lol.

The comment you are referring to is most likely from a really old post. He was an intern at Dropbase a few years ago, back when we were working on a very different product!

Re: Show HN: Dropbase – Build internal web apps with just Python

#35

Post by zlg_codes »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #19

I've done plenty of internal web apps with Python's old cgi module and it's really about the simplest approach. Too bad the cgi module has recently been removed from Python due to some weird neurosis about underused modules. It's still possible to side-load it from someplace though.

This is something that irritates me about some languages. I get the intention of keeping a clean language, but for something as foundational and basic as CGI... what's the real problem in keeping it there? It's not like CGI itself has changed much in the past 20 years...

I've written some stuff in Python but it seems like keeping up with Python and its near-infinite PEPs is half the job. They still can't get on the same page about how to package and share things on PyPI, or which tooling a developer should use to test integration or build packages, etc. I'm somewhat realizing what I enjoy about Python is more its dynamism and lack of verbose syntax. Or, cool stuff like list comprehensions and decorators.

The community is insufferable. I wish I could find a programming language that was high level, effective, but boring in the sense that it isn't being changed every other year. Something that I can build on for five years or more.

It's a strange thought but I've heard of people using PHP, of all things, to write general purpose CLI programs and whatnot. It had never occurred to me to try that even though I knew it was possible. It just felt... dirty.

Re: Show HN: Dropbase – Build internal web apps with just Python

#37

Post by urban_alien »

zlg_codes wrote: post #35
throwaway81523 wrote: post #19

I've done plenty of internal web apps with Python's old cgi module and it's really about the simplest approach. Too bad the cgi module has recently been removed from Python due to some weird neurosis about underused modules. It's still possible to side-load it from someplace though.

This is something that irritates me about some languages. I get the intention of keeping a clean language, but for something as foundational and basic as CGI... what's the real problem in keeping it there? It's not like CGI itself has changed much in the past 20 years... I've written some stuff in Python but it seems like keeping up with Python and its near-infinite PEPs is half the job. They still can't get on the s…

Not strange at all! Leave those assumptions behind, take a look at symfony/console and minicli. PHP is not shiny or snarky as Python, but resilient and "boring". The "dirtness" that you are feeling is just a way to keep those insufferable people that you mentioned out.

Re: Show HN: Dropbase – Build internal web apps with just Python

#38

Post by jstummbillig »

ayazhan wrote: post #26
djangelic wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assumed this was because it’s internal devs that are actively looking for platforms to build on, while external devs might already have stacks they prefer to work on due to how it interacts with their security postures. Pure speculation, but it’s been my anecdotal experience.

i second that. for external-facing tools, you probably want something custom, branded, and more flexible. when it comes to internal tools, you typically want something quick to get the job done. at dropbase, our focus was on enabling developers to get stuff done efficiently. we noticed that for 90% of internal tool use cases, you only need a table and modal to get user input. so we focused on developing those. while…

Are you aware how most companies external apps look like? Here's how: They don't.

What you compete with, what you have to beat, is not "something custom branded and more flexible". It's nothing at all. Cutting yourself out of that market with a tool that would easily be powerful and user friendly enough to fill this gap does not make any sense to me, if that is in fact your true reason. (And also I don't understand how that could make any sense intuitively if you just look at how often you see google forms being used by a big company as an external data collection tool).

It could be such an obvious differentiator for any of the competitors – but, like I said, I suspect the actual reason to why people are so ready to give up on this is rooted somewhere else.

Re: Show HN: Dropbase – Build internal web apps with just Python

#39

Post by cjohnson318 »

ayazhan wrote: post #4
cjohnson318 wrote: post #3

Hell yeah. I build internal web apps with Django. I'll definitely try this out in my upcoming project. Some major pain points are going past tables of data to (1) graphs (2) create/update modals (3) cron jobs. I've used and contributed to some plotting library I don't remember. For modals I usually use Vue+Primevue and for cron jobs I use celery+redis. Login is a pain, but it's mostly a solved problem on my end.

thanks for the feedback! i'm curious, how critical are graphs for your internal tools and what are some examples of their use?

Pretty darn critical! I built a service a few years ago to scrape natural gas volumes from different refineries and my client wanted that data plotted over time. Another project collected and displayed wellhead pressure data.

Oh yeah, maps are also super important, and being able to overlay different statistics and or graphics over them.

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