Launch HN: Pynecone (YC W23) – Web Apps in Pure Python

You've mentioned no-code tools. For a client, I had to work with the no-code tool Bubble a lot. They do something similar, where the front-end is not built statically but dynamically and uses WebSockets to communicate with the back-end. I don't think this is a good idea (and that's why Bubble is also trying to switch to static pages now, but you can imagine what it takes to do that once you reach a certain size).

So I get the point of the project, I can see a mathematicians getting value out of this.

Still, I would advice against using this for anything else than a small project (in the current state):

- any action your perform means a round trip to the server. This is why the counter seems so slow. Everytime you click on increment, it goes through the entire internet, ask for +1, and get the answer, then update the page.

- easy things will be easy, but even the average things are going to be hard. Every time you will want something that is not provided out of the box, the workaround is going to be painful.

- you are coding with react, one of the most complicated framework there is, but with a layer of indirection turning it into a black box. You better hope everything goes well because I don't wish debugging that on anyone.

- the database layer is going to bite you if you start to get fancy. Guaranteed.

- if you need this, you probably can't assess security. So no way to know if your website is secured. In fact, you can pretty much bet it is not.

This means if you use it for something big, you will eventually hit some kind of a big wall. Or something kind of painful experience that will possibly harm the project.

But of course, if the alternative is to never having started the project in the first place, you should definitely go for it.

The deployment being a pain for most python dev, this alone will make your life way easier, and 99% of projects don't have more that a few requests per minutes and a couple of pages anyway.

Just know what you get into: this is a trade off, as everything in engineering, not a unicorn.

Also, this is the Y combinator, so I assume there is a bigger plan behind this.

Good luck to the creators though, anything that move the needle even is good to attempt.

But yes, it is a tradeoff and the abstractions underneath are leaky. It is not just React but NextJS and then the whole NodeJS ecosystem which is surely one of the most challenging ones.

That client/web part could have been tackled by writing a micro library in pure JS with no transpilers of any sort - and probably they might do it in future not sure how, but something like Brython[0] could be interesting.

[0] https://brython.info

> any action your perform means a round trip to the server. This is why the counter seems so slow. Everytime you click on increment, it goes through the entire internet, ask for +1, and get the answer, then update the page.

Seems inconsistent with OP's

> the frontend compiles down to a React/NextJS app, so from the end-user’s perspective it looks like any other website

The python functions are NOT executed on the frontend.