FastUI: Build Better UIs Faster • Hacker News Board

Re: FastUI: Build Better UIs Faster

#131

Post by shmooper » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 6:15 PM UTC

PufPufPuf wrote: post #4

This isn't a new concept, other examples include Solara (React-based) and NiceGUI (Vue-based). It's very practical for internal apps, if you accept that all controls have a small delay due to events being processed server-side.

Thanks for sharing! I wasn't aware of these frameworks. As for the events being processed server-side, this is exactly where FastUI differs from any other framework I've stumbled so far - the widgets are sent to the client, and it knows how to render them, so just like any other js framework there's no roundtrip for every keystroke.

Re: FastUI: Build Better UIs Faster

#132

Post by avarun » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 6:17 PM UTC

mikeocool wrote: post #129

It’s amazing how many front end frameworks now exist that require running a backend server to even render basic HTML. This, remix, next, Astro, and so many others. Do the features offered by these really warrant the complexity?

Making initial page loads significantly faster, especially on intermittent mobile connections (which is an extremely common situation often underestimated by web developers) is worth a little bit of complexity, yes. And the entire point of these frameworks is to abstract away most of that complexity.

Re: FastUI: Build Better UIs Faster

#133

Post by no_wizard » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 6:25 PM UTC

> If you're a frontend developer — you can concentrate on building magical components that are truly reusable, no copy-pasting components for each view.

Please tell me this isn’t common. It’s been a solved problem for at least 15 years now. At least since PHP had any form of prominence on the backend in the late 90s early 2000s. At a minimum going all the way back to knockout.js, handlebars, YUI and ember.

If this is common in 2024 I have lots of questions

Re: FastUI: Build Better UIs Faster

#134

Post by shmooper » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 6:27 PM UTC

slmjkdbtl wrote: post #61

What's the use case for this? Is doing a roundtrip to the server on every client interaction ever a good idea for building user facing UI?

The ingenuity here is exactly not needing a roundtrip for every interaction. You request a page -> fastapi sends the client a json defining the components -> the frontend knows how to render this json into react components that run locally just like any other js framework.

Re: FastUI: Build Better UIs Faster

#135

Post by cuu508 » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 6:33 PM UTC

avarun wrote: post #132

mikeocool wrote: post #129

It’s amazing how many front end frameworks now exist that require running a backend server to even render basic HTML. This, remix, next, Astro, and so many others. Do the features offered by these really warrant the complexity?

Making initial page loads significantly faster, especially on intermittent mobile connections (which is an extremely common situation often underestimated by web developers) is worth a little bit of complexity, yes. And the entire point of these frameworks is to abstract away most of that complexity.

What complexity is needed or helpful? Plain HTML is simple and loads quick.

Re: FastUI: Build Better UIs Faster

#136

Post by FinalBriefing » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 6:34 PM UTC

mikeocool wrote: post #129

It’s amazing how many front end frameworks now exist that require running a backend server to even render basic HTML. This, remix, next, Astro, and so many others. Do the features offered by these really warrant the complexity?

This is nothing new. HTML has always been rendered from a sever.

Re: FastUI: Build Better UIs Faster

#137

Post by lowercased » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 6:39 PM UTC

TheCapeGreek wrote: post #95

The stated goal/outcome seems pretty good. Glad to see more of this in Python in particular. To those dissing it for production use case over a hand build frontend by a frontend dev: yeah, no shit. But not everything needs such work put in. This is perfect for internal tools, and there's plenty of indie hackers out there proving that you don't need an immaculate UI to get customers anyway. Use it for what it is good…

> where you need something functional first and pretty second.

Yet Filament manages to be fairly 'pretty' out of the box. I did a POC for a client project, and replicated about 10% of their current system in about a month, and got a fair amount of praise from folks at both the professional look/style/feel, yet... I did 0 on the styling, just used the defaults.

Yes, Filament has some rough edges when you try to color outside the lines, as with any toolkit. However, I don't think I've found anything else that comes remotely close to the combination of productivity and decent styling out of the box. Not just in PHP, but in any stack.

Re: FastUI: Build Better UIs Faster

#138

Post by peddling-brink » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 6:40 PM UTC

pjerem wrote: post #122

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not Python? I've never seen huge differences between Jinja, Razor, or Blade. Is there something about it you find extra annoying?

In Jinja, Razor, or Blade, you write, HTML that you enrich. With FastUI, you write Python.

When Python is the hammer you have..

Not every web app needs to survive HN levels of traffic. Empowering the that already knows Python to make an app to automate their team’s toil is a great thing.

Re: FastUI: Build Better UIs Faster

#139

Post by gscho » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 6:44 PM UTC

semiquaver wrote: post #130

ic_fly2 wrote: post #110

Call me old fashjioned but what is wrong with django and htmx? Works beautifully and fast, send only rendered code to the front. Have db admin for when you scale

> old fashjioned > htmx Htmx went 1.0 a little over three years ago. Is it really something you can call old fashioned?

The concepts that htmx has been built on have been around forever. Maybe that’s what they meant.

Re: FastUI: Build Better UIs Faster

#140

Post by MyFirstSass » Sat, Mar 02, 2024, 6:52 PM UTC

pjerem wrote: post #125

ic_fly2 wrote: post #110

Call me old fashjioned but what is wrong with django and htmx? Works beautifully and fast, send only rendered code to the front. Have db admin for when you scale

I'm currently writing an app with Django. It's such a breeze. Everything just works and I only have to think about the problem I want to solve. The documentation is as fantastic as it was 10-15 years ago. I'm not even really fan of Python and I really miss static typing (renaming things is painful) but oh well, I'm so productive with it that I can live with this. Honestly, I think it's the only framework that I've ev…

I've been a Laravel guy mostly, but tried Flask for a project last year, and it was so incredibly easy to get up and running.

Still not really sure how the two compare, but there was just something about the extremely tried and battletested code. Nothing got in my way, the code told you what it did, it was fast etc.