My only concern is Python. Wonderful for AI and scripting, but I’m not sure how well it works as a web server. Although, I’d assume that a lot of the web server code is actually C under the hood…
The database, storage and network are usually the bottlenecks in these kinds of websites, not the programming language. It might add a few ms of latency, but the big lags come from congestion or bad db queries.
There's some fun stuff you can do with compiling Python into C. e.g. https://cython.org/ or https://docs.exaloop.io/codon/. But I don't see a need for it as PieFed doesn't really crunch numbers much. Mastodon has a Ruby backend. Kbin uses PHP. Until you get really massive the choice of language doesn't really make a huge difference to performance as most of the work in most web apps is done by the database.
I am a little bit concerned about the limited support for asynchronous I/O in the Flask framework, which could limit scalability at some point. But there are options for the future. Quart claims to be a drop-in replacement for Flask.
In any case, performance is just one factor. For a FOSS project to be successful long term it needs contributions from other developers and with the massive pool of Python developers there are, hopefully I'll be getting some help soon. Also along those lines I have deliberately chosen:
to code as simply and stupidly as possible, to make it accessible to most skill levels.
No complicated frameworks, fancy algorithms, or esoteric design patterns. Model View Controller, baby.
No frontend build process or tool chain (vanilla JS only. No npm).
Few third party dependencies, only Redis and Postgresql. Mostly.
All this makes setting up an initial development environment, finding the bit you want to change and testing it out fairly quick and easy.
I hope it's these choices that lead to an absolute blizzard of contributions from many people and that's where the true strength of the project will come from.
Thanks for the in-depth response! I definitely understand choosing Python for a fledgling project like this and trying to attract a developer community.
As for my musing about C and Python, I wasn’t really talking about Cython or anything like that; I actually meant that I figured the specific code in the Python standard library and various frameworks for server applications were written under the hood with C and heavily optimized.
In any case, performance is just one factor. For a FOSS project to be successful long term it needs contributions from other developers and with the massive pool of Python developers there are, hopefully I’ll be getting some help soon. Also along those lines I have deliberately chosen:
<span style="color:#323232;">to code as simply and stupidly as possible, to make it accessible to most skill levels.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">No complicated frameworks, fancy algorithms, or esoteric design patterns. Model View Controller, baby.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">No frontend build process or tool chain (vanilla JS only. No npm).
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Few third party dependencies, only Redis and Postgresql. Mostly.
</span>
All this makes setting up an initial development environment, finding the bit you want to change and testing it out fairly quick and easy.
Sounds very wise to make it as accessible as possible. And you basically get super maintainable code as a side product!
I am very inspired by Beehaw and what they're trying to do. I'm building quite opinionated software with my values baked into it and those seem like a good fit for Beehaw. But I don't know any of the people involved so I'd be arriving very late to the party without any knowledge of the terrain or history. Best to stay out of it.
I just want to code, ban nazis, do linux admin and build community infrastructure. :)
I have honestly not found flask + (probably) sqlalchemy to be the easiest thing out there. Just like mailinglists: simple doesn’t mean easy. Many people conflate the two.
One of the good/bad things about Flask is it's quite a small framework which lets the developer do whatever they want (yay!) so it's easy to make an unholy mess (boo!). I hope that I've stayed on the rails with PieFed.
It's a bit sad what has happened in the most recent version of SQLAlchemy - they made it all weird and difficult. PieFed uses an older version which I find very intuitive and simple.
Looks like it’s too late to sign up, I just tried and it kept telling me to “verify that [I’m] not a robot” without giving me anything (like a captcha) to do so.
I signed up, no problem. There is a bit of funky behavior (I clicked on the Pie logo, and it changed to the word, "Logo" haha), but overall it looks sharp. I"m trying to figure out where to make suggestions - I'm a dark screen person, and it's got way too much white and blue - colors that suppress melatonin production. I'm mighty fond o' me melatonin.
Desktop, fwiw.
I do all the things, e.g. red/orange/yellow light from sunset to sunrise. I now think of Melatonin as a darktime hormone, rather than a sleep hormone. Have you ever noticed, sometimes people are awake in the darkness, and it's not even spooky or scary,... necessarily.
P.S. Is it just me or does join.piefed.social have no link to actually join or go to piefed.social? Also what software does the blog use i can’t find it listed
Yay, and thank YOU!!
Edit: I went over and looked. So the point of dark mode is to make things easy on the eyes, and to reduce interference with melatonin production. Melatonin production is blocked by blue and white (because it contains blue) light. The best option for dark mode is black background and orange type, as it provides good contrast with minimal interference with melatonin production.
The classic example is the White / Blue of Facebook - designed, no doubt to keep users awake, and clicking. I noticed sometime ago, that screen invert in iOS yields, White --> Black, and Blue --> Orange. Technically speaking any light will reduce melatonin production to some degree, some researchers would say, even being able to see your hand in front of your face, like at all, will do it. And the biggest effect is from Blue and White light. :-)
Currently, dark mode is just whatever Bootstrap considers ideal dark mode to be so there's a lot of room for improvement. PieFed includes a theming framework which will make it quick and easy to build custom themes so I expect many more design options will be available in the future.
Sorry about that, I've had a hard time getting the captcha working while also having decent XSS protection. I've deployed a probable fix, please try again.
I didn’t get an account. I haven’t even heard of it until someone just messaged me asking me about PieFed. Kind of a scumbaggy thing to do if someone took the name.
Wow, that fucking sucks bro. I checked out the instance, and your name (and iconic profile pic) was on the top of whatever they call “All” over there.
If it takes off and you need to create a new name, please keep us informed. Your memes are vital lifeblood to the fediverse, lmao (but seriously everyone here loves you and we wanna keep in touch).
Oh I think that’s just me. I think they’re just showing the federated stuff from lemmy.world and other places on that feed. Was probably just this account you saw.
And if I need to change names then so be it but looks like we’re okay for now <3
Thank you though! I do have a Mastodon account though that you can check out here. I haven’t been super active lately from Holiday stress and what not but if anything ever happens Lemmy wise that’s the first place I’d be going.
It looks quite neat. I like the emphasis on making things easy for admins and using more tried and true technology compared to Lemmy’s bleeding-edge (that sometimes causes issues). Here’s hoping it’ll be a great alternative to Lemmy.
Where can we read about what they do differently? So far I’ve seen its written in python which is cool since it makes it easier for people to contribute.
Curious to know of they will enable the ability to follow users and subscribe to threads which are two of the biggest missing features on Lemmy in my opinion.
I wonder if they’ll enable parts of the Lemmy api so the Lemmy apps can be used for Piefed
FYI misskey does not implement the masto api. some software like pleroma/akkoma, gotosocial and yes, a few misskey forks do (in various states of brokenness, with iceshrimp being the most compliant one) but misskey itself does not.
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