Web Application Development Entirely In Python With Anvil

Summary

The knowledge and effort required for building a fully functional web application has grown at an accelerated rate over the past several years. This introduces a barrier to entry that excludes large numbers of people who could otherwise be producing valuable and interesting services. To make the onramp easier Meredydd Luff and Ian Davies created Anvil, a platform for full stack web development in pure Python. In this episode Meredydd explains how the Anvil platform is built and how you can use it to build and deploy your own projects. He also shares some examples of people who were able to create profitable businesses themselves because of the reduced complexity. It was interesting to get Meredydd’s perspective on the state of the industry for web development and hear his vision of how Anvil is working to make it available for everyone.

Announcements

• Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great.
• When you’re ready to launch your next app or want to try a project you hear about on the show, you’ll need somewhere to deploy it, so take a look at our friends over at Linode. With 200 Gbit/s private networking, scalable shared block storage, node balancers, and a 40 Gbit/s public network, all controlled by a brand new API you’ve got everything you need to scale up. And for your tasks that need fast computation, such as training machine learning models, they just launched dedicated CPU instances. Go to pythonpodcast.com/linode to get a $20 credit and launch a new server in under a minute. And don’t forget to thank them for their continued support of this show!
• And to keep track of how your team is progressing on building new features and squashing bugs, you need a project management system designed by software engineers, for software engineers. Clubhouse lets you craft a workflow that fits your style, including per-team tasks, cross-project epics, a large suite of pre-built integrations, and a simple API for crafting your own. With such an intuitive tool it’s easy to make sure that everyone in the business is on the same page. Podcast.init listeners get 2 months free on any plan by going to pythonpodcast.com/clubhouse today and signing up for a trial.
• Bots and automation are taking over whole categories of online interaction. Discover.bot is an online community designed to serve as a platform-agnostic digital space for bot developers and enthusiasts of all skill levels to learn from one another, share their stories, and move the conversation forward together. They regularly publish guides and resources to help you learn about topics such as bot development, using them for business, and the latest in chatbot news. For newcomers to the space they have the Beginners Guide To Bots that will teach you the basics of how bots work, what they can do, and where they are developed and published. To help you choose the right framework and avoid the confusion about which NLU features and platform APIs you will need they have compiled a list of the major options and how they compare. Go to pythonpodcast.com/discoverbot today to get started and thank them for their support of the show.
• You listen to this show to learn and stay up to date with the ways that Python is being used, including the latest in machine learning and data analysis. For even more opportunities to meet, listen, and learn from your peers you don’t want to miss out on this year’s conference season. We have partnered with organizations such as O’Reilly Media, Dataversity, and the Open Data Science Conference. Coming up this fall is the combined events of Graphorum and the Data Architecture Summit. The agendas have been announced and super early bird registration for up to $300 off is available until July 26th, with early bird pricing for up to $200 off through August 30th. Use the code BNLLC to get an additional 10% off any pass when you register. Go to pythonpodcast.com/conferences to learn more and take advantage of our partner discounts when you register.
• The Python Software Foundation is the lifeblood of the community, supporting all of us who want to run workshops and conferences, run development sprints or meetups, and ensuring that PyCon is a success every year. They have extended the deadline for their 2019 fundraiser until June 30th and they need help to make sure they reach their goal. Go to pythonpodcast.com/psf today to make a donation. If you’re listening to this after June 30th of 2019 then consider making a donation anyway!
• Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the newsletter, and read the show notes. And if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions I would love to hear them. You can reach me on Twitter at @Podcast__init__ or email [email protected])
• To help other people find the show please leave a review on iTunes and tell your friends and co-workers
• Join the community in the new Zulip chat workspace at pythonpodcast.com/chat
• Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Meredydd Luff about Anvil, platform for building full stack web applications entirely in Python

Interview

• Introductions
• How did you get introduced to Python?
• Can you start by explaining what Anvil is and the story of how and why you created it?
• Web applications come in a vast array of styles. What are the primary formats of web applications that Anvil supports building and what are its limitations?
• Are there certain categories of users that tend to gravitate toward Anvil?
  • How do you approach user experience design and overall usability given the varied backgrounds of your customers?
• For someone who wants to use Anvil can you talk through a typical workflow and highlight the different components of the platform?
• Can you describe how Anvil itself is implemented and how it has evolved since you first began working on it?
  • For the javascript transpilation, are you using an existing project such as Transcrypt or PyJS, or did you develop your own?
• Given that the Python dependencies on your servers are managed by how, how do you approach version upgrades to avoid breaking your customer’s applications?
• What are the main assumptions that you had going into the project and how have those assumptions been challenged or updated in the process of growing the business?
• What have been some of the biggest challenges that you have faced in the process of building and growing Anvil?
  • What are some of the edge cases that you have run into while developing Anvil? (e.g. browser APIs, javascript <-> Python impedance mismatch, etc.)
• Can you talk through how you manage deployments of your customer’s applications?
• What are some of the features of Anvil that are often overlooked, under-utilized, or misunderstood which you think users would benefit from knowing about?
• What are some of the most interesting/innovative/unexpected ways that you have seen Anvil used?
• What are the limitations of Anvil and when is it the wrong choice?
• What do you have planned for the future of Anvil?

Keep In Touch

• @meredydd on Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Website
• meredydd on GitHub

Picks

• Tobias
  • Pipx
• Meredydd
  • Skulpt
  • Python in the Browser implementations generally

Links

• Anvil
• Delphi
• Visual Basic
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service)
• Bokeh
  • Podcast Interview
• Plotly
• Raspberry Jam by the Raspberry Pi Foundation
• PyCharm
• Websockets
• Skulpt
• Comparing implementations of Python in the Browser on Python Tips
• Brython
• The Matrix
• Pyodide
• How Skulpt works (PyCon 2017 Lightning Talk)
• How Anvil’s autocompleter works (PyCon UK 2017 Lightning Talk)

The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA