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How did you choose Dioxus? There are about a dozen Rust frameworks [1] that are trying to do the "native, reactive UI" you can deploy on desktop, web/wasm, mob

How did you choose Dioxus? There are about a dozen Rust frameworks [1] that are trying to do the "native, reactive UI" you can deploy on desktop, web/wasm, mobile, etc. I'm worried about betting on the wrong horse and being stuck maintaining abandonware or being faced with a painful and pointless migration. In a similar evolutionary race, there were dozens of Rust HTTP server frameworks. Now Axum, Actix, and Rocket appear to have the lead. I'm worried I made the wrong choice as the community momentum appears to be shifting to Axum. Is there any indication Dioxus will win? It looks to have a large community, venture backing [2] (a good sign!), and more momentum than some of the others. I'd like to use one of these frameworks now, but I worry it's too early to place a bet. Are there any good indicators that now is a good time to start using it? Are Leptos and Yew the other top contenders? These are the two names I hear the most, apart from Dioxus. What would make them a better (or worse) choice? My company is heavily invested in Rust, Actix, and Bevy. We're looking at pairing Bevy with Dioxus or a similar framework to deliver native desktop and mobile clients in the future. I just want to make the right choice. Also, stupid question: is Dioxus named after the Pokemon [3]? The logo makes me think there's something to that, but there are no Pokemon references in the codebase. [1] https://github.com/flosse/rust-web-framework-comparison https://github.com/flosse/rust-web-framework-comparison [2] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/dioxus-labs https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/dioxus-labs [3] https://m.bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Deoxys_(Pok%C3%A9mon) https://m.bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Deoxys_(Pok%C3%A9m...

cchance 3y ago
I'd say leptos and dioxus are the bigger ones now i feel like many people moved from ywe to those 2
jkelleyrtp 3y ago
Creator here, so I'm biased... Yew has had about 10 commits in the past 6 months and the original creator has since moved on. Leptos is a good solution for web-app type stuff, but IMO there's a big usability gap. I'll let the community be the judge there, but I wrote up some differences here: https://github.com/dioxusLabs/dioxus/?tab=readme-ov-file#dioxus-vs-leptos https://github.com/dioxusLabs/dioxus/?tab=readme-ov-file#dio... Leptos was fortunate enough to receive a lot of attention from youtubers on its launch. The most important thing here: we raised venture money for Dioxus. We have many years of runway, are pretty lean, and exclusively focused on pouring resources into making the best GUI library for Rust (and potentially branching out to Python/JS). Getting into YC isn't easy, raising money isn't easy, and there's currently no other Rust projects with similar goals, talent, and financial backing. Biased of course. Oh, and we're committed to the bevy integration. bevy_dioxus is already updated for 0.5 and we share corporate sponsors with the bevy folks. Final point, legally, no we're not inspired by any pokemon with a similar sounding name. Even though that pokemon is awesome.
- dorian-graph 3y ago
  > The most important thing here: we raised venture money for Dioxus. Important, but in a _bad_ way? What will the VC expect out of Dioxus? How will you make money?
  - jkelleyrtp 3y ago
    Venture doesn't necessarily mean bad. Long term the goal the goal is to dissolve the gates to Apple and Google's walled gardens, which I personally believe is a net good. As much is the idealist in me wants to do that with no venture backing, the realist in me knows we need Dioxus to be self sustaining and providing legitimate value for people to switch. Google spends 76 million dollars a year on catering alone - there's no way you can compete with Android and Flutter without huge resources. Apple and Google capture the value for their platforms via fees and lock-in. Our goal is to capture value by providing really good utilities for building and deploying apps. You can't move heaven and earth without a really big lever, and venture gives us more leverage.
    - steveklabnik 3y ago
      If you don't mind me asking, what's the actual business model here? Are you going to charge for those utilities?
      - jkelleyrtp 3y ago
        Yes, we're looking at something like a Vercel/Expo model, probably built on Fly, Cloudflare, or AWS, but designed to be self hosted. We've got a decent amount of enterprise adoption and I think there's money to be made by selling something like a self-hosted Vercel. TBD on licensing - I'd want it to be open source but we wouldn't want people reselling our deploy platform. We raised a seed to prove that people want to build with dioxus. If that hypotheses is validated, then we invest in the deploy model. If not, we have OSS grants and corporate sponsors that will keep the project alive for years even if the VC money runs out. I'm not super interested in making money at the hobbyist tier - those developers are our evangelists. Enterprise self hosting is likely harder but I think we can provide a lot of value to teams building apps in large companies.
earthling8118 3y ago
Axum is certainly where it is at and where it has been for a while in terms of HTTP server frameworks. I'd say actix is in second place for sure, but it is wholly viable regardless. Rocket is no longer in the running as far as I'm concerned, and it hasn't been for quite some time. Dioxus is certainly taking the head spot in front end. I still have more concern about the venture backing than I have confidence about it, but for better or for worse, it is certainly the best attempt at this so far. I enjoyed yew as a react-style framework, but its development is slow. Dioxus has made a lot of progress, and in my experience, it is currently the best experience that can be had. It's hard to say if now is the correct time, but I'd be watching it closely if I were you. There's been major work to improve the framework with many of the interfaces changing. Now might be a good time because of the progress made here, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were more changes in store. Although I imagine that you're used to that from bevy anyway.
- qchris 3y ago
  Not sure if you've already seen this, but back in November, Rocket 0.5 (stable) was released, and a 501(c)3 dedicated to Rocket was formed that now owns the Github org, etc. As a result, it's been getting much more regular updates, with the original maintainer still involved in development but no longer the only person with push access. I'd certainly agree that it's no longer the de facto top leader, but as a batteries-included HTTP server, it works well (it's been chugging along powering my personal website for years now) and as far as I know still has quite a sizeable userbase. [1] https://rocket.rs/news/2023-11-17-version-0.5/ https://rocket.rs/news/2023-11-17-version-0.5/

cchance 3y ago

I'd say leptos and dioxus are the bigger ones now i feel like many people moved from ywe to those 2

jkelleyrtp 3y ago

Creator here, so I'm biased... Yew has had about 10 commits in the past 6 months and the original creator has since moved on. Leptos is a good solution for web-app type stuff, but IMO there's a big usability gap. I'll let the community be the judge there, but I wrote up some differences here: https://github.com/dioxusLabs/dioxus/?tab=readme-ov-file#dioxus-vs-leptos https://github.com/dioxusLabs/dioxus/?tab=readme-ov-file#dio... Leptos was fortunate enough to receive a lot of attention from youtubers on its launch. The most important thing here: we raised venture money for Dioxus. We have many years of runway, are pretty lean, and exclusively focused on pouring resources into making the best GUI library for Rust (and potentially branching out to Python/JS). Getting into YC isn't easy, raising money isn't easy, and there's currently no other Rust projects with similar goals, talent, and financial backing. Biased of course. Oh, and we're committed to the bevy integration. bevy_dioxus is already updated for 0.5 and we share corporate sponsors with the bevy folks. Final point, legally, no we're not inspired by any pokemon with a similar sounding name. Even though that pokemon is awesome.

dorian-graph 3y ago
> The most important thing here: we raised venture money for Dioxus. Important, but in a _bad_ way? What will the VC expect out of Dioxus? How will you make money?
- jkelleyrtp 3y ago
  Venture doesn't necessarily mean bad. Long term the goal the goal is to dissolve the gates to Apple and Google's walled gardens, which I personally believe is a net good. As much is the idealist in me wants to do that with no venture backing, the realist in me knows we need Dioxus to be self sustaining and providing legitimate value for people to switch. Google spends 76 million dollars a year on catering alone - there's no way you can compete with Android and Flutter without huge resources. Apple and Google capture the value for their platforms via fees and lock-in. Our goal is to capture value by providing really good utilities for building and deploying apps. You can't move heaven and earth without a really big lever, and venture gives us more leverage.
  - steveklabnik 3y ago
    If you don't mind me asking, what's the actual business model here? Are you going to charge for those utilities?
    - jkelleyrtp 3y ago
      Yes, we're looking at something like a Vercel/Expo model, probably built on Fly, Cloudflare, or AWS, but designed to be self hosted. We've got a decent amount of enterprise adoption and I think there's money to be made by selling something like a self-hosted Vercel. TBD on licensing - I'd want it to be open source but we wouldn't want people reselling our deploy platform. We raised a seed to prove that people want to build with dioxus. If that hypotheses is validated, then we invest in the deploy model. If not, we have OSS grants and corporate sponsors that will keep the project alive for years even if the VC money runs out. I'm not super interested in making money at the hobbyist tier - those developers are our evangelists. Enterprise self hosting is likely harder but I think we can provide a lot of value to teams building apps in large companies.

earthling8118 3y ago

Axum is certainly where it is at and where it has been for a while in terms of HTTP server frameworks. I'd say actix is in second place for sure, but it is wholly viable regardless. Rocket is no longer in the running as far as I'm concerned, and it hasn't been for quite some time. Dioxus is certainly taking the head spot in front end. I still have more concern about the venture backing than I have confidence about it, but for better or for worse, it is certainly the best attempt at this so far. I enjoyed yew as a react-style framework, but its development is slow. Dioxus has made a lot of progress, and in my experience, it is currently the best experience that can be had. It's hard to say if now is the correct time, but I'd be watching it closely if I were you. There's been major work to improve the framework with many of the interfaces changing. Now might be a good time because of the progress made here, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were more changes in store. Although I imagine that you're used to that from bevy anyway.

qchris 3y ago
Not sure if you've already seen this, but back in November, Rocket 0.5 (stable) was released, and a 501(c)3 dedicated to Rocket was formed that now owns the Github org, etc. As a result, it's been getting much more regular updates, with the original maintainer still involved in development but no longer the only person with push access. I'd certainly agree that it's no longer the de facto top leader, but as a batteries-included HTTP server, it works well (it's been chugging along powering my personal website for years now) and as far as I know still has quite a sizeable userbase. [1] https://rocket.rs/news/2023-11-17-version-0.5/ https://rocket.rs/news/2023-11-17-version-0.5/