Is Mesop and Web Components the cure to Front-end fatigue?

Web components are a nice idea if you squint hard enough, but architecturally they're inadequate for solving the problems modern frameworks and libraries address — that's why you see them used nearly nowhere. I think needless to say that the answer to tooling fatigue is not more new tooling. As someone who's spent way more time working on frontend applications, libraries and tooling than is good for anyone's hairline, I would say the main thing we really need is time. There is clearly a best practices converging across the tooling landscape, best ways to solve common problems etc, but we're not quite there yet. But I can see it in the distance if I squint.

We posted on Show HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40567327 ~a month ago and got a ton of great feedback.

Since then, we've made a lot of updates to Mesop, including adding support for web components which allows you to write custom JS and wrap existing JS libraries.

We've also fully re-designed our home page at https://google.github.io/mesop - with many more code examples and demo, which hopefully shows how Mesop is different than some of the other Python UI frameworks out there.

As always, appreciate any feedback about the project. Thanks!

Lit and web components are cool, but "front-end fatigue" is no more real than "Python fatigue," since every technology has drawbacks. Yes, I have forgotten the pain of "bundling," as vite, Typescript, and bun are lightyears past grunt, gulp, and webpack. These days, to play with GPU-enabled toys, I am more often struggling with venv and [mini|ana]conda. The long and short of it is that DX continues to evolve across ecosystems.

Mesop's API is... interesting. It seems to replace all REST/CRUD/MVC abstractions with some kind of RPC, which is a perfectly valid way to structure a program. Certainly it saves Python devs from having to learn that corner of the web domain and its pattern language which, hey, may be pasé? Especially in a world of notebooks?

I can imagine this will open up fruitful partnerships with Web Component developers and also give Python devs an entry point into web UI paradigms, so it's certainly a positive for eg GenAI R&D.

That phrase "front-end fatigue" is just sticking in my craw. Where do Python devs get off complaining of "fatigue" over one layer of the stack or another? Data migrations can be just as tricky. God knows infra tooling is more tedious than anything re: node_modules. Must be some kind of selecting bias. Who is understaffing all these Python shops? Is it academia? Are even private AI R&D departments wary of over-investing in ephemeral interfaces? For testing, at least, I suppose they are. Maybe this is related to the reasons why game devs split art and mechanics for as long as possible.

But at the same time, I can't help but feel we're letting Bret Victor down in some way.

Anyway, while I can easily see Mesop elevating demo day, I struggle to believe it will facilitate agile product development which, hey, might not be where the money is at, these days!

Fatigue problem isn't solved by having more technology, it's about human condition. There is always push/pull between doing new things vs keeping things same.

I'm not too keen on another Google dependency. You gentlefolk have a tendency toward customer screwery and killing the things I rely on. It simplifies Google products right out of my decision making.

The end of my frontend fatigue was to get away from Javascript and it's doctrine of churn.