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After years of crispy forms and HTML-in-Python hackery, I am firmly on the side that the presentation layer shouldn't be so tightly coupled to the code that ren

After years of crispy forms and HTML-in-Python hackery, I am firmly on the side that the presentation layer shouldn't be so tightly coupled to the code that renders it. A template language (that isn't Python) is sufficient. Even better if you can render the templates from different languages. I'll never be defining web app presentation in Python.

Capricorn2481 3y ago
Why not Python? I've never seen huge differences between Jinja, Razor, or Blade. Is there something about it you find extra annoying?
- pjerem 3y ago
 In Jinja, Razor, or Blade, you write, HTML that you enrich. With FastUI, you write Python.
 - peddling-brink 3y ago
 When Python is the hammer you have.. Not every web app needs to survive HN levels of traffic. Empowering the <insert profession here> that already knows Python to make an app to automate their team’s toil is a great thing.
 - astrea 3y ago
 Exactly. If your team is fully fluent in Python and has a need for a web UI, easier to adopt something like FastUI than try to quickly upskill in JavaScript for a one-off project.
 - sirsinsalot 3y ago
 Perhaps, but it is a false economy. Anyone writing a UI for the web, should be fluent in HTML/CSS and so on. In that case, other templating approaches make more sense. I say this with absolute conviction; you're just deferring costs, technical debts with compounding interest. When you come to pay it off, it'll bankrupt you.
 staticautomatic 3y ago
 I'm not the least bit ashamed to say that I can't grok CSS today any better than I could when I first tried to learn it about 20 years ago. Whether or not alternative abstractions are "bad" or "wrong" or whatever is entirely irrelevant to me. The worst case scenario is that I end up finding them as painful as CSS.
 - LtWorf 3y ago
 They can use markup and a mkdocs
 - Capricorn2481 3y ago
 What? How is Razor more of HTML than Jinja? Both are mostly HTML with syntax specific to their languages. They don't even look that different. Jinja: {% for item in items %} {{ item }} {% endfor %} Blade: @foreach(var item in items) { @item }
boxed 3y ago
I think you might be colored by having used a bad system. It's like all those people who say ORMs are bad and evil, and somehow almost all of them have been forced to use Hibernate :P You might want to try (my project) iommi https://docs.iommi.rocks/ https://docs.iommi.rocks/ It's very different.
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  ORMs are bad and I say that as a veteran of Hibernate, Entity Framework (almost every version, including code-first and db-first), E Bean, NHibernate and, worst of all by far, ActiveRecord.
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    And yeah, you are just reinforcing the GP's point, because all of those are atrocious. I am at the ORMs are bad club, but if you try any of the systems that encode the logic paradigm into their interface, they are a completely different kind of beast. (MS has brought some of it into C# with linq so you can use with the Entity Framework. It's not a fully logic system, and has so many attrition points with the Entity Framework that it's mostly not useful at all.)
    - mvdtnz 3y ago
      I'm very familiar with Linq and Linq to SQL. It's as close as any ORM got to being "good enough" and was abandoned by Microsoft very early in its lifecycle. Linq in Entity Framework is a minefield of N+1's and excessive eager loading.
      - boxed 3y ago
        The N+1 problem is solved in iommi (again, I am one of the authors) by simply: 1. keeping a log of queries per request with stack traces 2. at the end, checking if there are N+1 problems 3. print a big warning with example SQL and stack trace to the console During dev if I miss a prefetch_related/select_related the console will start to print gigantic stack traces telling me where the problem is. I don't have these problems in production because I get alerted to them in dev. These are not only solvable problems but EASILY solvable problems! (Also, in iommi tables, most of the times it can automatically figure out and do the prefetch/select related for you, further diminishing the problem)

Capricorn2481 3y ago

Why not Python? I've never seen huge differences between Jinja, Razor, or Blade. Is there something about it you find extra annoying?

pjerem 3y ago
In Jinja, Razor, or Blade, you write, HTML that you enrich. With FastUI, you write Python.
- peddling-brink 3y ago
 When Python is the hammer you have.. Not every web app needs to survive HN levels of traffic. Empowering the <insert profession here> that already knows Python to make an app to automate their team’s toil is a great thing.
 - astrea 3y ago
 Exactly. If your team is fully fluent in Python and has a need for a web UI, easier to adopt something like FastUI than try to quickly upskill in JavaScript for a one-off project.
 - sirsinsalot 3y ago
 Perhaps, but it is a false economy. Anyone writing a UI for the web, should be fluent in HTML/CSS and so on. In that case, other templating approaches make more sense. I say this with absolute conviction; you're just deferring costs, technical debts with compounding interest. When you come to pay it off, it'll bankrupt you.
 - staticautomatic 3y ago
 I'm not the least bit ashamed to say that I can't grok CSS today any better than I could when I first tried to learn it about 20 years ago. Whether or not alternative abstractions are "bad" or "wrong" or whatever is entirely irrelevant to me. The worst case scenario is that I end up finding them as painful as CSS.
 - LtWorf 3y ago
 They can use markup and a mkdocs
- Capricorn2481 3y ago
 What? How is Razor more of HTML than Jinja? Both are mostly HTML with syntax specific to their languages. They don't even look that different. Jinja: {% for item in items %} {{ item }} {% endfor %} Blade: @foreach(var item in items) { @item }

boxed 3y ago

I think you might be colored by having used a bad system. It's like all those people who say ORMs are bad and evil, and somehow almost all of them have been forced to use Hibernate :P You might want to try (my project) iommi https://docs.iommi.rocks/ https://docs.iommi.rocks/ It's very different.

mvdtnz 3y ago
ORMs are bad and I say that as a veteran of Hibernate, Entity Framework (almost every version, including code-first and db-first), E Bean, NHibernate and, worst of all by far, ActiveRecord.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  And yeah, you are just reinforcing the GP's point, because all of those are atrocious. I am at the ORMs are bad club, but if you try any of the systems that encode the logic paradigm into their interface, they are a completely different kind of beast. (MS has brought some of it into C# with linq so you can use with the Entity Framework. It's not a fully logic system, and has so many attrition points with the Entity Framework that it's mostly not useful at all.)
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    I'm very familiar with Linq and Linq to SQL. It's as close as any ORM got to being "good enough" and was abandoned by Microsoft very early in its lifecycle. Linq in Entity Framework is a minefield of N+1's and excessive eager loading.
    - boxed 3y ago
      The N+1 problem is solved in iommi (again, I am one of the authors) by simply: 1. keeping a log of queries per request with stack traces 2. at the end, checking if there are N+1 problems 3. print a big warning with example SQL and stack trace to the console During dev if I miss a prefetch_related/select_related the console will start to print gigantic stack traces telling me where the problem is. I don't have these problems in production because I get alerted to them in dev. These are not only solvable problems but EASILY solvable problems! (Also, in iommi tables, most of the times it can automatically figure out and do the prefetch/select related for you, further diminishing the problem)