Alessandro Molina - Moving away from NodeJS to a pure python solution for assets
Channel: EuroPython Conference
Date: 02/08/2016

Alessandro Molina - Moving away from NodeJS to a pure python solution for assets
[EuroPython 2016]
[20 July 2016]
[Bilbao, Euskadi, Spain]
(https://ep2016.europython.eu//conference/talks/moving-away-from-nodejs-to-a-pure-python-solution-for-assets)

The talk covers the complexity of managing an asset transformation
pipeline through tools like Grunt and NodeJS, especially during
deploy, test suites or when a new development environment has to be
configured from scratch, and showcase how this complexity can be
dodged by using tools like WebAssets and DukPy.

No more need to keep around two languages, two package management
systems and manage your dependencies between them by youself. Just pip
install your app and have it working.

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When working with WebApplications it is common to rely on an asset
management pipeline to compile scripts, minify css or preprocess
images.

Most of the tools available today rely on JavaScript to perform those
steps and always forced Python developers to rely on NodeJS to have
grunt perform the pipeline tasks, coffee-script to compile their
CoffeeScript or lessc to build their css. This causes longer setup
times for projects newcomers, complex development environment, working
with two package managers and dependencies that you use once a week
but still need to be there.

The talk will showcase the DukPy project and focus on how it is
possible to build a pure python asset pipeline relying on DukPy to run
javascript tools and WebAssets framework to perform the most common
tasks that usually Nodejs and tools like Grunt handle for us, greatly
reducing the development environment complexity and making its setup
as simple as ‘pip install’.

The talk aims at explaining the complexity of managing an asset
transformation pipeline through tools like Grunt, especially during
deploy, test suites or when a new development environment has to be
created, and showcase how this complexity can be dodged by using tools
like WebAssets and DukPy.

No more need to keep around two languages, two package management
systems and manage your dependencies between them by youself. Just pip
install your app and have it working.