Show HN: Weft – A reactive and interactive Python experience (play.weft.sh)

6 points by zeapo ↗ HN
Hi HN,

I built Weft over the last two weeks of Christmas break. I was teaching my kids Python and noticed the lack of interactivity in some of their learning experiences. The feedback loop was too long.

I wanted to provide them with an experience similar to Bret Victor's concepts on Learnable Programming; i.e. an easier way to learn is to see immediately the reaction to your actions. Hence the reactivity ;)

It is currently in early alpha and I’m planning to open-source the repo under AGPLv3 soon once I clean up the prototype code.

I wrote up a short blog post with more details on the "Why" and the implementation here: https://zenadi.com/posts/weft-announcement

I’d love to hear your feedback or ideas on how to make this better.

2 comments

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This looks nicely aligned with Bret Victor’s ideas around tight feedback loops. One thing I’m curious about is how you’re thinking about debugging and state visibility as programs grow beyond small examples.

In reactive systems, we’ve found the learning experience improves a lot when users can inspect how a value changed over time, not just its current output. Do you see Weft moving toward any kind of execution history or state timeline, or are you intentionally keeping it minimal for teaching?

Love it. I'm definitely using it with my nieces.

I didn't quite understand the role of Rust here? Mind explain? (thanks)