Impressive that your demo on wrapping React (https://pynecone.io/docs/advanced-guide/wrapping-react) only downloads 2.2mb. That seems quite low for both React and your library. Promising tech!
Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
121–130 of 329 posts
Re: Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
#122Earlier 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
Our goal is for the user to never have to see JS. We try to catch most errors in Python during compile time. We're also not trying to reinvent things like CSS styles, just make them accessible in Python.
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Re: Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
#123I'd love to see something like this. I'm an old computer science guy and would love to write software again. I can write plenty of functionality in Python but I don't really want to learn all the JS stuff. I just don't like it. If I could abstract away the details it would be a big help. I'm not going to build anything that requires scale or commercial performance so I can afford to compromise versus the "purity" of…
> ...I'm an old computer science guy and would love to write software again. I can write plenty of functionality in Python but I don't really want to learn all the JS stuff... Back in early 2000s, i used to be more of a front-end dev...but over the years of being more of a manager (or PM or product manager) i stepped away from daily development...So, you know, I lost my touch. But a few years ago when i tried to dip…
I'm in exactly the same boat. Ive managed to keep inntouch with core tools on the backend, but frontend has just withered on the vine, so to speak. Learning all the JS stuff is just too hard when combined with back end, data, auth, layout, display, responsive, etc.
Re: Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
#124I inadvertently built something similar: https://www.pycob.com We should talk. If your open source roadmap includes getting rid of your npm dependency then we might just migrate to Pynecone for our front-end.
I'll second this sentiment.
Re: Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
#125I haven't seen anyone mention Anvil[1] yet, but it lets you "Build web apps with nothing but Python." and is lovely tool that I've successfully used for a handful of side projects. But as someone who feels most at home with Python, I always love to see new competition in this space. [1] https://anvil.works/
EDIT: My following statement about self hosting is incorrect. You can, infact, self host.
This looks wonderful, but the inability to self host is a killer from the solo developer point of view. Being limited to 50,000 database rows on the free account isn't ideal.
Re: Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
#126I'm not exaggerating but this might just be the highest impact library I've seen. As a backend developer who has lots of great project ideas but bail at the thought of having to use JavaScript and HTML, this library is a godsend! My only question is why it took so long for someone to implement it? And where are the equivalent libraries for Go, Rust and Java?
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.
JS only becomes complex when you are trying to create an enterprise version of your app along with a build platform. You can always just sprinkle in tags in your HTML for simple one liners without getting into the weeds.
Re: Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
#127Just tried signing up for the hosting waitlist, but the webpage errors with "The domain name zzz@domain.uk does not exist". I'd suggest removing whatever checking is in place there, unless you plan to keep the gTLDs up to date.
Thanks for pointing this out, will fix
Re: Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
#128I don't want to downplay the library, but how hard is Javascript/HTML for the majority of python programmers? You might not make the most beautiful websites, but you can make a functional website if what you're displaying is primarily data to users because you're doing big data/AI and so forth and not setting up a consumer facing marketing platform. What's the use case here?
It's a big mental hurdle.
I don't really care about HTML/CSS/JS. I really don't care about React. But the four of those form this gigantic cottage industry of tribal knowledge that requires so much fiddling. In short, I don't want to be a webdev.
I just want to use the browser as a dumb display device and a software delivery mechanism. I want the UI to be as simple as possible until I start getting traction, then I'll get someone to add some paint to make it passable.
The dream is a VB-like product that lets me focus on creating features, not worrying about technical inanities like getting CORS configured right for the 5000th time.
Re: Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
#129I'm not exaggerating but this might just be the highest impact library I've seen. As a backend developer who has lots of great project ideas but bail at the thought of having to use JavaScript and HTML, this library is a godsend! My only question is why it took so long for someone to implement it? And where are the equivalent libraries for Go, Rust and Java?
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,…
Useful list. Dash & bokeh as two more in the space
https://github.com/plotly/dash https://docs.bokeh.org/en/latest/
Re: Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python
#130It really reminds me of https://github.com/miyakogi/wdom but also https://github.com/jupyter-widgets/ipywidgets and https://github.com/flexxui/flexx
The only different aspect is that the goal of Pynecone seems to be web apps over the network and not web interfaces to local programs.