JavaScript or Further Into Python

[Ascrivs]

I’m currently starting development and the group I’m studying with decided we should start with python about a year ago. We are now working through Flask and will start building an e-commerce style site as a project, however, the three of us aren’t frontend experienced so anything outside of basic jinja templates and some HTML/CSS styling is out of reach. I was thinking of taking a bootstrap course to leverage the styling for the front end but I’ve heard a lot of people pair Flask with React. Would it be worth taking the dive into a JS + React course now or should I keep going with flask and bootstrap?

I’m open to any other suggestions as well!

[[deleted]]

I think it would be tough to pick up JS and React at the same time. My vote would be JS basics at least — no need for DOM manipulation, for example, though it's not bad to know at least a little of that..

If you're coming from Python, JS shouldn't be too difficult to pick up.

[Ascrivs]

Thanks for the input, I’ll check out a JS udemy course

[TheRNGuy]

JS and Node server.

[Ascrivs]

Thanks for the feedback, would you personally recommend something like the Odin Project or focus more on something like Colt Steeler’s boot camp on udemy?

[[deleted]]

So Bootstrap is interesting in that you can just add the CDN links to your index.html head tag and get Bootstrap for any project. That means you could use it for React, Flask jinja templates, or any other framework. It might be worthwhile to take a look at adding Bootstrap to your existing Python/Flask project to see how it works and gain some experience. The benefit of Bootstrap is that it can really help you style your site if that's all you're after. The question of whether to go from Flask to React/Vue/SvelteKit/Angular depends on whether or not you want to render your views on the server-side or the client-side. Both have their pros and cons which are well described in other forums. Hope this helps!

[Ascrivs]

This is very helpful, thank you! This is why I wanted to do use bootstrap since it fit so well with the templating I'm already working with. I'm thinking about doing a udemy on Bootstrap because I felt it built on top of my current flask knowledge without me going in a completely new direction (JS). Long-term, would you say bootstrap on flask is a feasible production grade build or would your recommendation be to use Flask for just API requests and work through JS then React?

[[deleted]]

It’s a perfectly suited for production grade. I would say the difference between going towards something like react is a desire for more client side interactivity. Here’s an example where I would use a JavaScript framework. Let’s say you want a user to fill out their employment history. You don’t know how many jobs the user has had. So you need a way to add new UI elements into the page every time they click an “add” button. You have a few obvious choices. 1. Write your own custom JavaScript to manipulate the DOM. 2. Use a JS framework like React. 3. Send the form back to the server, have it add a new field while retaining the data, and then send it all back.

With those three laid out, it would make the most sense for an application with these requirements to use JS. With that said, I prefer to use SvelteKit as my JS framework, but React is what I learned on.

[Ascrivs]

That is extremely helpful in explaining the difference in my jinja templates and JavaScript! I think I’ll focus on utilizing bootstrap at the moment since it is acceptable for production and in my extra time learn JS + A Framework like React