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Rio: Web apps in pure Python

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Re: Rio: Web apps in pure Python

#61

Post by fmnxl »

You'd need to re-invent the wheel on so many things.

Flexbox layout? CSS animations? Some custom npm library that I need to use to provide social logins, SDKs to integrate payment gateways? etc etc

If all you want is just a set of UI components, sure. We already have plenty of UI libraries out there.

These days there are many better ways to write low-JS, low-boilerplate code. HTMX for interactivity, UnoCSS for generated CSS on the fly. It's even possible not to bundle your ES6 modules these days, with .

Re: Rio: Web apps in pure Python

#62

Post by jtr1 »

pjmlp wrote: post #12

This kind "you don't need JavaScript, HTML and CSS" approach always fails flat. We already went down this route several times since the first dotcom wave and all the frameworks that tried to target the browser as if we don't need to know "JavaScript, HTML and CSS". Until we need to debug the application, or why it isn't rendering as it should. It is also why I am not a big fan of Blazor, even though I admire its engi…

Frontend dev here. I think it’s important to remember that there’s not necessarily one use case to rule them all when it comes to the web. If this helps a smaller project that is Python-first get their work in front of a wider audience, is that a bad thing? I’m inclined to think it’s just fine to have lots of approaches available.

Re: Rio: Web apps in pure Python

#63

Post by vishnudeva »

greener_grass wrote: post #19
vishnudeva wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for Reflex. Truly amazing.

How is it writing React without multi-line lambdas? They are everywhere in JavaScript and I couldn't imagine my day-to-day without them!

I think my answer: I have no idea what multi-line lambdas are, probably explains why I find Reflex (or Rio/Streamlit, etc) amazing, haha

For a person with zero front-end knowledge, it's a game changer.

Re: Rio: Web apps in pure Python

#65

Post by ag_rin »

I feel like you’re getting a lot of pushback on this and I’m going to go out and say this is cool and I’m glad people continue to try to innovate on the webdev experience.

The way I see it is building apps somewhat similarly to SwiftUI is actually a pretty good idea. If you have established rules for how each container expands or fills its content you can build a great web app development experience without getting down into css and html explicitly. Just Vbox container Hbox container text container etc. I can certainly see a niche for this as it is a different style of UI development.

I’ve never been great as a UI designer so doing it in the traditional web stack has always been even harder but I’ve found that with SwiftUI I can usually get 90% of a good look very quickly.

Re: Rio: Web apps in pure Python

#66

Post by davepeck »

I'm excited to see more projects like Rio exploring the full-stack python web dev space. There are definitely categories of users for which the approach makes sense.

---

For me personally -- and I'm guessing for a bunch of other HNers -- writing full-stack web apps strictly in python is a non-goal.

I've settled on a comfortable (for me) stack for smaller projects that need python on the backend that combines:

1. Litestar (or another lightweight HTTP framework of choice like flask, etc.)

2. HTMX

3. htpy.dev (an in-python HTML builder)

4. Custom web components implemented in a plain-old JavaScript ES6 module loaded directly by the browser

A typical project only needs a handful of components. HTMX and htpy.dev both play very nicely with web components.

When I want zero build steps, I write plain JavaScript + JSDoc comments. JSDoc is... okay-ish, but it ain't no typescript.

If I need a database, I'll grab SQLAlchemy. I wish there were a mature lightweight solution here; maybe Tortoise ORM will get there soon?

There's nothing in this stack that couldn't strictly be done in javascript-land. JSX syntax with HTMX is pretty great and much better than any in-python HTML builder. But often my projects have other requirements (like ML) where python is, at least today, inevitable.

Re: Rio: Web apps in pure Python

#67

Post by greener_grass »

vishnudeva wrote: post #63
greener_grass wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it writing React without multi-line lambdas? They are everywhere in JavaScript and I couldn't imagine my day-to-day without them!

I think my answer: I have no idea what multi-line lambdas are, probably explains why I find Reflex (or Rio/Streamlit, etc) amazing, haha For a person with zero front-end knowledge, it's a game changer.

In JavaScript you can do this:

    const f = (x, y) => {
      const z = x + y;
      const w = z * 2;
      return z - w + x;
    };
In Python, you cannot do this:

    f = (
      lambda x, y:
        z = x + y;
        w = z * 2;
        return z - w + x;
    )
Instead, you need to pull it out into a def:

    def f(x, y):
      z = x + y;
      w = z * 2;
      return z - w + x;
Sometimes, this is no big deal. But other times, it's damn annoying; the language forces you to lay out your code in a less intuitive way for no obvious benefit.

Re: Rio: Web apps in pure Python

#68

Post by Onawa »

pjmlp wrote: post #12

This kind "you don't need JavaScript, HTML and CSS" approach always fails flat. We already went down this route several times since the first dotcom wave and all the frameworks that tried to target the browser as if we don't need to know "JavaScript, HTML and CSS". Until we need to debug the application, or why it isn't rendering as it should. It is also why I am not a big fan of Blazor, even though I admire its engi…

I would argue that it depends on your skill as a developer, the stacks that you're familiar with, etc. As an example I work with a lot of scientific developers who are familiar with python and R but don't know anything about the website needing to make a web application. They're also not trying to optimize for thousands of users or have the cleanest interface. Technologies like Dash, Bokeh, Stream lot, and Shiny for Python and R all help these types of people make a functional web application for a small set of users without having to go down the rabbit hole of web technologies.

Re: Rio: Web apps in pure Python

#69

Post by eigilsagafos »

Sn3llius wrote: post #26
pjmlp wrote: post #12

This kind "you don't need JavaScript, HTML and CSS" approach always fails flat. We already went down this route several times since the first dotcom wave and all the frameworks that tried to target the browser as if we don't need to know "JavaScript, HTML and CSS". Until we need to debug the application, or why it isn't rendering as it should. It is also why I am not a big fan of Blazor, even though I admire its engi…

Hey, Rio dev here. Love to see us on Hackernews Rio comes with its own set of debug tools, so I don't see debugging as a problem. Our components even explain their entire layouting flow, so I'd argue debugging Rio layout is much easer than CSS :P For example, here's an excerpt of what the built-in dev-tools have to say about a button in one of my apps: > The component was allocated a width of 104.0 by its parent MyRo…

As developers/engineers we love to solve problems. Too many times though we mislabel "friction" as "problem" and then start trying to solve the friction based on our current skill set or viewpoint. So frontend devs feel friction working backend and vice versa leading to all sorts of efforts like this that mostly fail. Good luck though :)

Re: Rio: Web apps in pure Python

#70

Post by synergy20 »

davepeck wrote: post #66

I'm excited to see more projects like Rio exploring the full-stack python web dev space. There are definitely categories of users for which the approach makes sense. --- For me personally -- and I'm guessing for a bunch of other HNers -- writing full-stack web apps strictly in python is a non-goal. I've settled on a comfortable (for me) stack for smaller projects that need python on the backend that combines: 1. Lite…

Hopefully JSX can be more mainstream, that is, I can use it directly in js/html/css projects without all the extra tools pre-installed and pre-configured, making jsx part of the 'vanilla' development will be really nice(no react, no vuejs etc).
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