GitHub – AnswerDotAI/fasthtml: The fastest way to create an HTML app
Posted by jpluimers on 2024/09/11
The HTMX based [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – AnswerDotAI/fasthtml: The fastest way to create an HTML app
FastHTML is a new next-generation web framework for fast, scalable web applications with minimal, compact code. It’s designed to be:
- Powerful and expressive enough to build the most advanced, interactive web apps you can imagine.
- Fast and lightweight, so you can write less code and get more done.
- Easy to learn and use, with a simple, intuitive syntax that makes it easy to build complex apps quickly.
FastHTML apps are just Python code, so you can use FastHTML with the full power of the Python language and ecosystem.
Via [Wayback/Archive] Erik Meijer on X: “Reverse selling in full action.”
[Wayback/Archive] Jeremy Howard on X: “PSA: Don’t start looking at FastHTML if you have something else that needs doing. It’s addictive. Much of the @answerdotai team has been impacted over the last few weeks. “I’ll just build one more little web app and then I’ll…””
[Wayback/Archive] Thread by @jeremyphoward on Thread Reader App – Announcing FastHTML. A new way to create modern interactive web apps.
[Wayback/Archive] Siddharth on X: “@jeremyphoward @Railway @vercel @huggingface I am supposed to be studying for an ML interview and now I have spent two hours building a webapp. This is really well done.”
Two important drawbacks though:
- Lots of context dependent abbreviations like
rtandhdr, basically teaching newbies that cutting corners is OK. You’d think that with modern code completion and editors having macros, this would be a thing of the past. Not, especially when the author does not get the “bcuz” pun:- [Wayback/Archive] Sean Ravnsen on X: “@jeremyphoward @answerdotai Really dislike the cryptic abbreviations like rt and hdrs, just be explicit with route and headers (imo more pythonic)”
- [Wayback/Archive] Jeremy Howard on X: “@SeanPedersen96 @answerdotai”
Later (see below) I figured out that the architecture diagram of the picture in the tweet totally does not match the linked article.
- [Wayback/Archive] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers @wiert@mastodon.social on X: “@jeremyphoward @SeanPedersen96 @answerdotai Tried finding rt there. 42 matches, none of them indicating it meant route, all of them being parts of other words.”
More on cutting corners: [Wayback/Archive] Jeremy Howard on X: “@astralwave @Railway @vercel @huggingface Thanks will fix – let me know if you see any others. tbh I wrote a *lot* of content pretty quickly, so wouldn’t be surprised if there’s plenty of mistakes. (Not sure they’re “weird mistakes” though ;) )”
- It’s looks like one-man endeavour of which the author does not really appreciate any puns, including this XKCD one in combination with a compliment:
- [Wayback/Archive] Gilad on X: “@jeremyphoward @Railway @vercel @huggingface Seems amazing but also …”
- [Wayback/Archive] Jeremy Howard on X: “@gil2rok @Railway @vercel @huggingface That seems unnecessarily mean as a reaction to a library that endeavours entirely to make existing standards more accessible.” (narrator: many new web libraries try to do just that; being N+1 needs one to show compelling reasons of using a new library)
- [Wayback/Archive] Gilad on X: “@jeremyphoward @Railway @vercel @huggingface Seems amazing but also …”
Later I set back, re-read the comment-less tweet referencing the FastAI site [Wayback/Archive] style – fastai and understood the author is from the APL / J / K background admiring [Wayback/Archive] Notation as a Tool of Thought (the 1979 Turing Award Lecture by Kenneth E. Iverson. IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center which introduced APL and is heavily influenced by Charles Babbage:
As Babbage remarked in the passage cited b y Cajori, brevity facilitates reasoning.
The library seems to have brevity as a goal, which is hardly Pythonic and very incompatible with finding a broad user base.
In retrospect, likely not a library that I will enjoy to use.
--jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
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