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These "Python in the browser" projects are 1/ very cool 2/ seem entirely doomed. Try the pyjs demos. They're like "the best of the responsive web circa 2007." S

These "Python in the browser" projects are 1/ very cool 2/ seem entirely doomed. Try the pyjs demos. They're like "the best of the responsive web circa 2007." Some of the demos don't even work, and none of them are particularly snazzy, modern, HTML5-ish, etc. It's difficult to straddle multiple languages, but you can either 1/ bite the bullet and start straddling or 2/ go all-in on JavaScript (or CoffeeScript, TypeScript, Dart... that compiles directly to JS) and a server-side JS implementation (node.js, Meteor, etc.) We're years beyond some-other-langauge in the browser being a gleam in someone's eye, yet it still 1/ doesn't work reliably, with up-to-date or at least near-current Python/Perl/Ruby code, 2/ isn't practical in real life, 3/ has no in-the-wild success examples.

ralmidani 11y ago
> It's difficult to straddle multiple languages, but you can either 1/ bite the bullet and start straddling or 2/ go all-in on JavaScript (or CoffeeScript, TypeScript, Dart... that compiles directly to JS) and a server-side JS implementation (node.js, Meteor, etc.) The problem, as I see it, is nobody in the node.js/io.js world (or anywhere else, for that matter) has built something that even approaches the power, simplicity, and elegance of Django(especially it's Model layer). I've looked at Meteor, but if I'm not mistaken, it currently does not support using a relational database. And Sails.js, while impressive, does not have as nice an ORM as Django's. I initially wanted to build apps in Django. Then for a long time, I thought I could live with Rails because it made up for ActiveRecord's (in my opinion) clunkiness with the built-in asset pipeline and stronger out-of-the-box support for building JSON APIs. Then two things happened: 1) I realized I could just split the app into server and client codebases, and since Ember-CLI is the recommended way to develop Ember apps now, I didn't need the asset pipeline. 2) I discovered just how seamlessly Django Rest Framework integrates with Django, providing a more elegant solution for building JSON APIs than Rails. Since then, I've switched back to Django and never looked back.

ralmidani 11y ago

> It's difficult to straddle multiple languages, but you can either 1/ bite the bullet and start straddling or 2/ go all-in on JavaScript (or CoffeeScript, TypeScript, Dart... that compiles directly to JS) and a server-side JS implementation (node.js, Meteor, etc.) The problem, as I see it, is nobody in the node.js/io.js world (or anywhere else, for that matter) has built something that even approaches the power, simplicity, and elegance of Django(especially it's Model layer). I've looked at Meteor, but if I'm not mistaken, it currently does not support using a relational database. And Sails.js, while impressive, does not have as nice an ORM as Django's. I initially wanted to build apps in Django. Then for a long time, I thought I could live with Rails because it made up for ActiveRecord's (in my opinion) clunkiness with the built-in asset pipeline and stronger out-of-the-box support for building JSON APIs. Then two things happened: 1) I realized I could just split the app into server and client codebases, and since Ember-CLI is the recommended way to develop Ember apps now, I didn't need the asset pipeline. 2) I discovered just how seamlessly Django Rest Framework integrates with Django, providing a more elegant solution for building JSON APIs than Rails. Since then, I've switched back to Django and never looked back.