7 ms·

Wt, C++ Web Toolkit

82 points by stesch 13y ago

bhauer 13y ago
Bring it on! You C++ web developers are cut from raw brass, and you have more guts than I. Nevertheless, I would love to see Wt added to our project [1]. Any follow-up on that? [1] http://www.marshut.com/kvuyp/is-someone-interested-in-cppcms-participating-on-this-web-framework-benchmark.html http://www.marshut.com/kvuyp/is-someone-interested-in-cppcms...
- wdu 13y ago
  I started adding wt, but i'm not yet there
escaped_hn 13y ago
Whats with the recent slew of c++ based web app libs? could it be that in round 6 of the techempower benchmarks, cpp basically won every in category raising interest in it for web stuff?
- mehrzad 13y ago
  Most of these aren't new, but just suddenly everyone posted them on this one day.
- running_foo 13y ago
  I suspected the same thing. People found that their favorite popular language was at the bottom of the list, and naturally they're curious about frameworks for the faster languages. Exploration is healthy, but realize C/C++ does not have the friendly, extensive and reliable web developer ecosystem that Ruby/JavaScript/Python/PHP has. If you want an in-between, check out Lua/OpenResty/Lapis.
  - bhauer 13y ago
    It looked as if a sort of a snowball effect occurred on the HN "new" page this afternoon. I laughed when I saw the third show up (see comment below). I personally could never stomach doing web development on C or C++. The C++ source code to the CPoll-cppsp test [1] makes me cringe in fear (no offense, xaxaxa!) But if there are those willing to give it an honest go, I'm not going to criticize them. Caution them, as you have, that it may be a frustrating exercise? Sure. That said, I think modern Java, Go, Scala, Erlang, Haskell, and Lua are all worth considering. [1] https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/master/cpoll_cppsp/www/db https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/mast...
    - plorkyeran 13y ago
      Have you looked at the sample code for Wt? I wouldn't describe it as beautiful, but it's closer to Java than that code.
      - bhauer 13y ago
        You're right, that looks quite clean! Still, C++ is not my particular cup of tea. That doesn't diminish my desire to see Wt and CppCMS added to our benchmark suite, though.
    - jacques_chester 13y ago
      HN snowballs because folk will see links in a popular post and post those links.
- Moto7451 13y ago
  Some people like C++. I think it probably has a connection to the techempower benchmarks but I've gone looking around at different C++ frameworks for use in my yet-to-be-made home page. I work day in and day out these days in Perl, C#, JS, and Objective C. Sometimes it's nice to take a step back to my C++ roots.
blinkingled 13y ago
It is great as a hobby project to try and right a C++ web framework but the reality is that in 2013 it would be laughable at best and outright fireable at worst to write web apps in C++. You might have legacy reasons or have some portions of the code that are very performance sensitive and you can augment your non-C++ app with C++ code for those reasons - that would be understandable. But a full fledged C++ web app - tsk tsk. Let's see - 1) Programmer availability and economics. Ton of RoR/PHP/Java and hopefully soon Go programmers, but good C++ programmers - good luck finding and retaining one. 2) Security - However competent YOU are - it just isn't possible to write a complex web facing system that is also secure. I was part of a failed project to write an IdM system in C++. It was a huge pain when we hired a external org to do Penetration Testing. After they were done we were left with lot of damage. Part of this is language, part is a lack of lot of great framework/best practices/expertise. 3) You reinvent the wheel a lot. Want to talk to LDAP - write your own load balancing and failover aware C++ classes or maintain somebody's unsupported OSS one. Equally headachy. Or pay for RogueWave - a ton of money per platform plus annual support contracts. 4) Cross Platform Pain - Enough said. Take the myriad of compilers, linkers, versioned libraries and try to ship a product that supports plugin based extendibility. Tough job convincing the customers to use the same compiler/linker/libraries to build their plugins. 5) Performance monitoring, debugging and profiling tools. See how well those compare against Java's JMX, HPROF, Heap dumps with OQL, MAT, YourKit etc. Just no match unless you are extremely competent and can manage debugging complex production systems without these tools. 6) Lack of something like a widely used Application Server ala Weblogic, JBoss. The value these provide in terms of ready clustering, db access, thread pooling - that's just not easily doable in C++. Add the lack of various 3rd party frameworks (ORM, Rules engines etc.) and you are ready to give up on C++. Now I am sure somebody will go clever and come up with solutions for each of the above but the point is when you pull all of them together - it's not hard to realize it won't be worth it.
- vanderZwan 13y ago
  Did you actualy even look at the framework, or just immediately drew conclusions and wrote this as soon as you saw the combination "C++" and "Web Toolkit"?
joshuak 13y ago
Looks pretty cool. Too bad about the licensing though: http://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt/download http://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt/download
- idupree 13y ago
  That licensing (GPLv2 & commercial) is pretty permissive. It's open-source. They didn't even pick the AGPL, so you probably don't even have to share your source code if you're feeling selfish and running your / your business's own web app. (But seriously, share. Being open source boosts your reputation even if you don't actually care about paying it forward.) (The commercial license doesn't allow private modifications, though it does give a perpetual license. Perhaps it could use some improvement if they want to make more sales. http://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt/license/Wt%20License%20Agreement.pdf http://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt/license/Wt%20License%20Agreement... )
  - gonzo 13y ago
    If this were BSD licensed, I'd consider ripping PHP out of pfSense, and using this.

82 points by stesch 13y ago

Bring it on! You C++ web developers are cut from raw brass, and you have more guts than I. Nevertheless, I would love to see Wt added to our project [1]. Any follow-up on that? [1] http://www.marshut.com/kvuyp/is-someone-interested-in-cppcms-participating-on-this-web-framework-benchmark.html http://www.marshut.com/kvuyp/is-someone-interested-in-cppcms...

wdu 13y ago
I started adding wt, but i'm not yet there

escaped_hn 13y ago

Whats with the recent slew of c++ based web app libs? could it be that in round 6 of the techempower benchmarks, cpp basically won every in category raising interest in it for web stuff?

mehrzad 13y ago
Most of these aren't new, but just suddenly everyone posted them on this one day.
running_foo 13y ago
I suspected the same thing. People found that their favorite popular language was at the bottom of the list, and naturally they're curious about frameworks for the faster languages. Exploration is healthy, but realize C/C++ does not have the friendly, extensive and reliable web developer ecosystem that Ruby/JavaScript/Python/PHP has. If you want an in-between, check out Lua/OpenResty/Lapis.
- bhauer 13y ago
  It looked as if a sort of a snowball effect occurred on the HN "new" page this afternoon. I laughed when I saw the third show up (see comment below). I personally could never stomach doing web development on C or C++. The C++ source code to the CPoll-cppsp test [1] makes me cringe in fear (no offense, xaxaxa!) But if there are those willing to give it an honest go, I'm not going to criticize them. Caution them, as you have, that it may be a frustrating exercise? Sure. That said, I think modern Java, Go, Scala, Erlang, Haskell, and Lua are all worth considering. [1] https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/master/cpoll_cppsp/www/db https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/mast...
  - plorkyeran 13y ago
    Have you looked at the sample code for Wt? I wouldn't describe it as beautiful, but it's closer to Java than that code.
    - bhauer 13y ago
      You're right, that looks quite clean! Still, C++ is not my particular cup of tea. That doesn't diminish my desire to see Wt and CppCMS added to our benchmark suite, though.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    HN snowballs because folk will see links in a popular post and post those links.
Moto7451 13y ago
Some people like C++. I think it probably has a connection to the techempower benchmarks but I've gone looking around at different C++ frameworks for use in my yet-to-be-made home page. I work day in and day out these days in Perl, C#, JS, and Objective C. Sometimes it's nice to take a step back to my C++ roots.

blinkingled 13y ago

It is great as a hobby project to try and right a C++ web framework but the reality is that in 2013 it would be laughable at best and outright fireable at worst to write web apps in C++. You might have legacy reasons or have some portions of the code that are very performance sensitive and you can augment your non-C++ app with C++ code for those reasons - that would be understandable. But a full fledged C++ web app - tsk tsk. Let's see - 1) Programmer availability and economics. Ton of RoR/PHP/Java and hopefully soon Go programmers, but good C++ programmers - good luck finding and retaining one. 2) Security - However competent YOU are - it just isn't possible to write a complex web facing system that is also secure. I was part of a failed project to write an IdM system in C++. It was a huge pain when we hired a external org to do Penetration Testing. After they were done we were left with lot of damage. Part of this is language, part is a lack of lot of great framework/best practices/expertise. 3) You reinvent the wheel a lot. Want to talk to LDAP - write your own load balancing and failover aware C++ classes or maintain somebody's unsupported OSS one. Equally headachy. Or pay for RogueWave - a ton of money per platform plus annual support contracts. 4) Cross Platform Pain - Enough said. Take the myriad of compilers, linkers, versioned libraries and try to ship a product that supports plugin based extendibility. Tough job convincing the customers to use the same compiler/linker/libraries to build their plugins. 5) Performance monitoring, debugging and profiling tools. See how well those compare against Java's JMX, HPROF, Heap dumps with OQL, MAT, YourKit etc. Just no match unless you are extremely competent and can manage debugging complex production systems without these tools. 6) Lack of something like a widely used Application Server ala Weblogic, JBoss. The value these provide in terms of ready clustering, db access, thread pooling - that's just not easily doable in C++. Add the lack of various 3rd party frameworks (ORM, Rules engines etc.) and you are ready to give up on C++. Now I am sure somebody will go clever and come up with solutions for each of the above but the point is when you pull all of them together - it's not hard to realize it won't be worth it.

vanderZwan 13y ago
Did you actualy even look at the framework, or just immediately drew conclusions and wrote this as soon as you saw the combination "C++" and "Web Toolkit"?

joshuak 13y ago

Looks pretty cool. Too bad about the licensing though: http://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt/download http://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt/download

idupree 13y ago
That licensing (GPLv2 & commercial) is pretty permissive. It's open-source. They didn't even pick the AGPL, so you probably don't even have to share your source code if you're feeling selfish and running your / your business's own web app. (But seriously, share. Being open source boosts your reputation even if you don't actually care about paying it forward.) (The commercial license doesn't allow private modifications, though it does give a perpetual license. Perhaps it could use some improvement if they want to make more sales. http://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt/license/Wt%20License%20Agreement.pdf http://www.webtoolkit.eu/wt/license/Wt%20License%20Agreement... )
- gonzo 13y ago
  If this were BSD licensed, I'd consider ripping PHP out of pfSense, and using this.