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Rewriting Reddit (2005)

aaronsw.com

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Re: Rewriting Reddit (2005)

#21

Post by rdtsc »

mox1 wrote: post #5

web.py is still my go to for lightweight webapps. I won't start a big discourse on the pros and cons vs. other technologies, but I will say it is incredibly easy to setup and use. The current github page is here: https://github.com/webpy/webpy If you are looking to get up and running quickly, I would recommend forking this skeleton: https://github.com/jzellman/webpy-skeleton Finally, the built in database framework i…

Yeah same here. It has the cleanest mapping from REST resources to Python class + method. It just made sense to me:

The router block at the top plus:

    class MyResource:

       def GET(self,...): ...

       def POST(self,...): ...

       def PUT(self,...): ...

       def DELETE(self,...): ...
Looks really nice. Haven't tried serving or rendering templates from it, so never tested that code.

Re: Rewriting Reddit (2005)

#22

Post by jedberg »

Igglyboo wrote: post #15
jedberg wrote: post #11

web.py never really worked well, so we ended up rewriting it again. The interesting thing was that Django still wasn't up to the task when we did that, mostly because it's templating engine was too slow. So we chose Pylons instead. It should be noted that Django has since fixed that issue.

Do you guys wish you were using Django right now?

I don't work there so I don't really know, but I do know that I usually don't use Django for the reasons listed in the blog post -- namely that you have to live in their world view to write Django.

Re: Rewriting Reddit (2005)

#23

Post by joesmo »

I think you can leverage these criticisms at about 90% of the framework software out there written in just about any language. Most developers like to create complex, complicated software mainly to show off their "cleverness" without thinking through the implications for the people that have to use it. It's as if they think that by cramming in every design pattern they can think of and using many different libraries together for no perceptible reason makes the software better when they could've achieved the same thing much more simply and cleanly if they had put a little thought into it. Such over-engineering is equally a problem as the spaghetti code of programmers who don't know better.

Re: Rewriting Reddit (2005)

#24

Post by 27182818284 »

swartkrans wrote: post #14
linuxydave wrote: post #2

Whatever happened to that Lisp clone?

I'm not sure if linuxydave is joking, but for those not in on the joke, Hacker News is written in arc, a Lisp variant. Hacker News resembles early versions of reddit quite a bit and Reddit was a ycombinator funded startup. Early on there was a big overlap in the two communities, although Hacker News was quite a bit more exclusive and limited in scope.

I knew HN was written in Arc, but I wasn't aware that it is the Lisp clone referred to by this piece. Was it?

Re: Rewriting Reddit (2005)

#25

Post by mattmanser »

jedberg wrote: post #19
rdtsc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you recall what didn't work? So far web.py looks like a really nice rest-ful api backed framework. I rather like it. http://webpy.org/

That version of web.py has little relation to the one that Aaron wrote. The current version looks pretty good but I have no idea what it's scalability and modularity story is.

As a slight aside, what do you usually do to stress test a new framework to see if it's scalable?

Re: Rewriting Reddit (2005)

#26

Post by swalsh »

geerlingguy wrote: post #3

Just wondering (as someone who only uses/touches Python indirectly, through some projects that use it, but is not currently a 'Python developer' by any means); was this posted in response to some recent drama in the Django community, or as an argument against Lisp? I'm just wondering why it seems this story is quickly getting upvoted on the front page of HN, when it seems there are no other frontpage stories remotely…

A combination of an interesting essay that most haven't read, and the fact that it makes us remember Aaron Schwartz

Re: Rewriting Reddit (2005)

#27

Post by temuze »

The first Python web framework I used was Django. I'm really glad I came across it first because I was inexperienced at the time and it forced me to adopt a lot of good practices.

However, now that I'm more experienced, I can relate a little to what Aaron is saying here. Learning all of this boilerplate stuff is annoying! Recently, I started contributing to a friend's rails app and I found the process of learning how to use each separate little tool tiresome.

This is why I like Pyramid - it starts off dirt simple. Hello World is almost as short in Pyramid as it is in Flask. As you grow, you can start organizing and adding different things as you need them. It has absolutely 0 magic. I find Pyramid to be a happy medium between Flask's minimalism and Django's extensibility.

Re: Rewriting Reddit (2005)

#30

Post by [deleted] »

27182818284 wrote: post #24
swartkrans wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if linuxydave is joking, but for those not in on the joke, Hacker News is written in arc, a Lisp variant. Hacker News resembles early versions of reddit quite a bit and Reddit was a ycombinator funded startup. Early on there was a big overlap in the two communities, although Hacker News was quite a bit more exclusive and limited in scope.

I knew HN was written in Arc, but I wasn't aware that it is the Lisp clone referred to by this piece. Was it?

[deleted]
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