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Rio: Web apps in pure Python

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Re: Rio: Web apps in pure Python

#131

Post by quantadev »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #125
quantadev wrote: post #109

The biggest tragedy in the history of software engineering was back in the mid 1990s when they failed to get Java (Applets) to run in the browser so they had to invent JavaScript, which was purely nothing but a hack put together over a weekend by one guy and it "stuck" like napalm onto humanity and has been burning us ever since. I would say at least one billion man hours (100 billion? Trillion?) has been wasted tryi…

Applets did run in the browser, I wrote a couple.

I wrote lots of Applets too. My parenthetical "(Applets)" in that post was misleading, sorry.

Java and Applets pre-existed JavaScript, and purely due to a 10 day timing constraint put on him by Netscape management (right after their deal with Sun Microsystems), Brendan Eich, wanting a Java-syntax, but not having enough time to do it right, cobbled together JavaScript instead.

Re: Rio: Web apps in pure Python

#132

Post by wiseowise »

bityard wrote: post #83

It's a bit sad that most of the comments here are negative. Most of them seem to be some variation of, "Nobody needs a tool like this, all you have to do is simply dedicate yourself to multiple years of writing corporate CRUD apps in both vanilla soul-crushing Javascript and web frameworks. You know, like I did." So, I am the target audience of this. I have a LOT of experience writing tools and automation and that is…

> because the tooling and patterns change almost daily.

That is just plain wrong. And that comes from someone who stayed from web dev for the same reason. Nowadays it’s vite/esbuild and you’re good to go.

And you don’t need any web framework to come up with basic ui.

touch index.html; touch styles.css; python3 -m http.server

And you’re good to go.

> "I know a fair amount about computers, I want to write a web application," is just about as fanciful as saying, "I know a fair amount about airplanes, I want to design a jet engine."

This analogy makes no sense.

Re: Rio: Web apps in pure Python

#133

Post by joshdavham »

Sn3llius wrote: post #92
joshdavham wrote: post #90

Looks cool! But I'm wondering who the target audience is. Most web devs prefer javascript. Are you hoping to target data scientists to build data apps, for example?

Exactly! We've seen from personal experience just how many people are currently working on AI/datascience projects and would love to create UIs for them, but just can't. That's exactly who Rio is for - people who are experts in one field, and don't want to invest hours and hours into other languages just to create interfaces for what they're working on.

That’s really smart. I was previously a data scientist who only knew python and made the transition last year to become a full stack web dev and I honestly had no idea what I was in for. I probably won’t use your tool, but I’ll happily recommend other data scientists check it out so they don’t have to go through what I did.

Re: Rio: Web apps in pure Python

#135

Post by jononor »

wiseowise wrote: post #132
bityard wrote: post #83

It's a bit sad that most of the comments here are negative. Most of them seem to be some variation of, "Nobody needs a tool like this, all you have to do is simply dedicate yourself to multiple years of writing corporate CRUD apps in both vanilla soul-crushing Javascript and web frameworks. You know, like I did." So, I am the target audience of this. I have a LOT of experience writing tools and automation and that is…

> because the tooling and patterns change almost daily. That is just plain wrong. And that comes from someone who stayed from web dev for the same reason. Nowadays it’s vite/esbuild and you’re good to go. And you don’t need any web framework to come up with basic ui. touch index.html; touch styles.css; python3 -m http.server And you’re good to go. > "I know a fair amount about computers, I want to write a web applica…

Last time I (kinda halfway / didn't) learned frontend it was react-create-app. Before that webpack. And before that grunt.

You do not need a framework if you really know CSS and HTML5 well, but that is exactly "knowing the whole stack" - which was the parents point.

Re: Rio: Web apps in pure Python

#136

Post by wiseowise »

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!

> They are everywhere in any proper programming language

FTFY.

Re: Rio: Web apps in pure Python

#137

Post by wiseowise »

afavour wrote: post #80
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…

IMO you either need to go all in or not at all. And by all in I mean your "web page" is nothing but a tag and your non-web framework is handling basically everything. It's an unholy nightmare for many reasons but it would at least allow you to make a reliable self-contained system. "We'll take your native constructs and jimmy them into some bastardized HTML" is almost always full of razor-sharp edge cases.

> And by all in I mean your "web page" is nothing but a tag and your non-web framework is handling basically everything

What a huge step back for the web.

Re: Rio: Web apps in pure Python

#138

Post by wiseowise »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #17
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…

Not sure I agree. What makes the presentation layer of HTML/JS/CSS so different from Win32 of yore, which had VB? VB enabled a LOT of bespoke monstrosities, but it let you do things quickly and easily. We need something like that for the web. There will always be essential complexity in dealing with the client/server nature of web apps. But there's still a lot of incidental complexity that can be burned off.

> We need something like that for the web.

It’s called HTML/CSS/JS.

Re: Rio: Web apps in pure Python

#139

Post by wiseowise »

quantadev wrote: post #109

The biggest tragedy in the history of software engineering was back in the mid 1990s when they failed to get Java (Applets) to run in the browser so they had to invent JavaScript, which was purely nothing but a hack put together over a weekend by one guy and it "stuck" like napalm onto humanity and has been burning us ever since. I would say at least one billion man hours (100 billion? Trillion?) has been wasted tryi…

[flagged]

Re: Rio: Web apps in pure Python

#140

Post by wiseowise »

quantadev wrote: post #131
mixmastamyk wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Applets did run in the browser, I wrote a couple.

I wrote lots of Applets too. My parenthetical "(Applets)" in that post was misleading, sorry. Java and Applets pre-existed JavaScript, and purely due to a 10 day timing constraint put on him by Netscape management (right after their deal with Sun Microsystems), Brendan Eich, wanting a Java-syntax, but not having enough time to do it right, cobbled together JavaScript instead.

> and purely due to a 10 day timing constraint put on him by Netscape management (right after their deal with Sun Microsystems), Brendan Eich, wanting a Java-syntax, but not having enough time to do it right, cobbled together JavaScript instead.

Stop spreading FUD. You have no idea what you’re talking about.

Stuff that people hate wasn’t even part of the original demo.

https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/did-brendan-eich-...

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