anvil-runtime VS Opal

Founder here. Self hosting is a thing - just "pip install anvil-app-server"!

https://anvil.works/open-source

To be fair, it has a free tier which gives you most of Anvil's features and lets you build unlimited apps. There's also the open-source app server if you want to host your apps yourself and work around the paid tier's DB limits: https://github.com/anvil-works/anvil-runtime

The runtime is open source: https://github.com/anvil-works/anvil-runtime

https://github.com/anvil-works/anvil-runtime#using-the-stand...

The code is GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3.

anvil server

Anvil is a platform for building web apps with nothing but Python - no HTML, CSS or JavaScript required. Anvil also comes with lots of built-in features like one-click deployment, databases, user authentication, email and the open-source app server.

anvil.works

Anvil | Software Developer | Cambridge, UK | On-site/Semi-Remote | Full-time or Part-time | https://anvil.works/jobs

Anvil | Junior Software Developer | Cambridge, UK | On-site/Semi-Remote | Full-time or Part-time | https://anvil.works/jobs

Anvil | Developer Advocate | Cambridge, UK | On-site/Semi-Remote | Full-time or Part-time | https://anvil.works/jobs

Help us fix web development at Anvil (https://anvil.works)!

Web development is way too hard – Javascript, HTML, CSS, SQL, and frameworks coming out of your ears. So we built Anvil: a simpler way for anyone to build full-stack web apps, entirely in Python. Anvil is a web framework; it’s an online code editor; it’s a GUI builder; and it’s a hosting platform. And you’ll be helping us with all of it.

We're looking for:

SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS:

Build the platform that's fixing web development for everyone. You’ll be working on the Anvil editor (that’s the development environment, code editor, drag-and-drop designer, version control, and so on) and the Anvil runtime (that’s the Python-to-JS compiler, UI toolkit, database, integrations, and the hosting engine that makes it so easy to deploy).

Our stack is mostly Javascript, Clojure and Python (in descending order of line count). We don’t need you to be an expert in all of these already, and for the junior role we don't need any. Otherwise, we’ll want to see evidence that you can hit the ground running with at least one of them – or that you’re a great all-rounder who won’t have a problem with any of them.

Much (or most) of your work will be open source: https://anvil.works/open-source

DEVELOPER ADVOCATES:

We need developers with great communication skills, to show people how to build awesome things with Anvil. You’ll be writing how-to guides, blog posts and tutorials, building example apps, presenting Anvil at conferences (when those resume), and helping our users – from individual developers to huge tech companies – build their applications. And then you’ll help us work out how to improve Anvil for them.

It's rewarding work – developers love being introduced to Anvil (our stand is always crowded[0] at conferences!). Plus, there are all the advantages of an early-stage startup: lots of autonomy, and huge impact.

We're bootstrapped and profitable, with customers ranging from tiny startups to household names. Find out more: https://anvil.works/jobs

Are you using the `--uplink-key` flag or `--client-uplink-key` flag when running your app with the app server? Anvil App Server - advanced config

It's been a long time dream for me since about 2013 when I started getting deep into Ruby and Rails, to be able to write Ruby code for the frontend instead of JavaScript. I was a lover and adopter of CoffeeScript (which had it's flaws and imperfections), but that mostly got killed by ES6. I wrote some PoCs with Opal[1] that felt pretty good to write, but the overhead was rough (this was many years ago so things might be different now) and I never really felt like I didn't have to know about or care about the underlying javascript. I tend to discard leaky abstractions as I feel they often add more complexity than they were meant to cover in the first place.

Has anybody used this or Opal or anything else? What is the state of "write your frontend in Ruby" nowadays?

[1]: https://github.com/opal/opal

Every time I see a respectable project use a Code of Conduct I remind myself that, unfortunately, Caroline Ada won[1]

[1] https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941

But we shouldn't overstate the difference: the JS and Ruby object models are actually similar in how dynamic both of them are. This makes Ruby-to-JS compilers like Opal easier to implement, according to an Opal maintainer.

This is an interview with the author of Opal, here's the project:

https://github.com/opal/opal

Not the OP, but from what I remember they would seek out every possible opportunity in every single possible open source community they could find and propose the CoC that they wrote. 0 contributions to the projects, with the exception of demanding that people implement incredibly verbose CoC's in their projects under the guise of "protecting the minorities contributing to the projects".

Most infamous instance is probably this one, in the Opal repo: https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941

As well as this thread in the Ruby issue tracker that devolves into pure chaos with Ada refusing to actually participate in any of the valid points others bring up: https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12004

And I'm sure there's many other instances if you look around a bit.

My experience with ruby for front end web dev is via https://opalrb.com/

Here's an example of the creator of the most adopted CoC (the Contributor Covenant) trying to get an open source contributor removed from a project due to his political opinions expressed on Twitter which she didn't like and found offensive.

So ruby has a JS transpiler - opal - https://opalrb.com/

I tried using it a little bit but the reality is if you need JS to make your app more interactable it's really worth it to just learn some JS. As soon as you need something complex the extra layer of abstraction just gets in the way and becomes more of a headache, and if you don't need anything complex then you don't need JS in the first place.

I stumbled upon this thing from years ago. I did some more digging to see what other communities thought about it. Turns out that a lot of people are really against Coraline's side.