Ask HN: How to build online calculator website?

1

Streamlit

Surprised nobody’s mentioned streamlit yet. Maybe I’m misunderstanding your use case, but if you want to create web apps out of your backend work, streamlit may be your ticket for “easy to understand on the back end, hyper-simple front end.” At least worth giving it a look. https://streamlit.io/.

#Developer Tools #Application And Data #Productivity 174 social mentions

2

Observable

#Data Visualization #Data Dashboard #Data Science Notebooks 286 social mentions

3

Elm

Little bit unconventional, but try writing your front end in Elm, and use the elm-ui library to avoid writing html or javascript. It compiles to javascript and will generate a an index.html for you if you want. Elm is highly opinionated… maybe you’ll love it, or maybe you’ll hate it, but it’s a good fit for what you want to do. https://elm-lang.org/.

#Programming Language #OOP #Generic Programming Language 114 social mentions

4

Bulma

For styling, depending on the look and feel you are shooting for, I would suggest either a classless CSS library like https://watercss.kognise.dev/ or (the one I sponsor) https://missing.style Or, if you want something a bit fancier and are willing to put in some work, Bulma is easy to get going with: https://bulma.io/ If you want to sprinkle in some fancy-pants AJAX functionality without going full JS front-end retard, I recommend my own library, htmx: https://htmx.org/examples.

#CSS Framework #Development Tools #Design Tools 109 social mentions

5

jQuery

Here's my personal goto: Find some minimal CSS framework. My preference is Skeleton [0] or Bootstrap [1]. The key is just finding something minimal that works without too much fuss. Personally, I rather have a minimal framework provide 'responsiveness' so I don't have to worry about it but I also want it to get out of the way of anything I do. Use JQuery [2]. Don't rely on CSS for animations or interactivity. In theory CSS does a lot. In practice it's a nightmare to use and to get it play well with whatever else I'm doing in the page. Write in "bare" HTML and "vanilla" JavaScript. Don't use a static site generator and don't use a JavaScript framework. Port in JavaScript libraries as needed. Some of the ones I tend to use are numeric.js [3], downlaod.js [4] and audience-minutes [5]. If you're doing spreadsheet things, maybe there's some JS package out there that will help. Doing "raw" HTML/"vanilla" JavaScript makes me effectively unhirable but for limited scope side projects where I have full control and want to minimize bit-rot, this is fine. The point is to create something that's minimal and focuses on functionality. The CSS is just there to make it not look like a Web 1.0 page but otherwise steps out of the way to focus on the actual usage of the application. For context, here are some projects where I've used this philosophy (all open source, feel free to pilfer): Noixer [6], Resonator Voyant Tarot [7], Boston Train Track (now defunct) [8], CalebHarrington.com (an artist friend) [9], What Is This License [10], HSV Hero [11]. [0] http://getskeleton.com/ [1] https://getbootstrap.com/ [2] https://jquery.com/ [3] https://github.com/sloisel/numeric [4] https://github.com/rndme/download [5] https://github.com/berthubert/audience-minutes [6] https://mechaelephant.com/noixer/ [7] https://abetusk.github.io/ResonatorVoyantTarot/ [8] https://github.com/abetusk/bostontraintrack [9] https://calebharrington.com/ [10] https://mechaelephant.com/whatisthislicense/ [11] https://mechaelephant.com/hsvhero.

#Development Tools #UI #Software Libraries 87 social mentions

6

Skeleton CSS

Here's my personal goto: Find some minimal CSS framework. My preference is Skeleton [0] or Bootstrap [1]. The key is just finding something minimal that works without too much fuss. Personally, I rather have a minimal framework provide 'responsiveness' so I don't have to worry about it but I also want it to get out of the way of anything I do. Use JQuery [2]. Don't rely on CSS for animations or interactivity. In theory CSS does a lot. In practice it's a nightmare to use and to get it play well with whatever else I'm doing in the page. Write in "bare" HTML and "vanilla" JavaScript. Don't use a static site generator and don't use a JavaScript framework. Port in JavaScript libraries as needed. Some of the ones I tend to use are numeric.js [3], downlaod.js [4] and audience-minutes [5]. If you're doing spreadsheet things, maybe there's some JS package out there that will help. Doing "raw" HTML/"vanilla" JavaScript makes me effectively unhirable but for limited scope side projects where I have full control and want to minimize bit-rot, this is fine. The point is to create something that's minimal and focuses on functionality. The CSS is just there to make it not look like a Web 1.0 page but otherwise steps out of the way to focus on the actual usage of the application. For context, here are some projects where I've used this philosophy (all open source, feel free to pilfer): Noixer [6], Resonator Voyant Tarot [7], Boston Train Track (now defunct) [8], CalebHarrington.com (an artist friend) [9], What Is This License [10], HSV Hero [11]. [0] http://getskeleton.com/ [1] https://getbootstrap.com/ [2] https://jquery.com/ [3] https://github.com/sloisel/numeric [4] https://github.com/rndme/download [5] https://github.com/berthubert/audience-minutes [6] https://mechaelephant.com/noixer/ [7] https://abetusk.github.io/ResonatorVoyantTarot/ [8] https://github.com/abetusk/bostontraintrack [9] https://calebharrington.com/ [10] https://mechaelephant.com/whatisthislicense/ [11] https://mechaelephant.com/hsvhero.

#CSS Framework #CSS Tools #Design Tools 17 social mentions

7

Bootstrap

Here's my personal goto: Find some minimal CSS framework. My preference is Skeleton [0] or Bootstrap [1]. The key is just finding something minimal that works without too much fuss. Personally, I rather have a minimal framework provide 'responsiveness' so I don't have to worry about it but I also want it to get out of the way of anything I do. Use JQuery [2]. Don't rely on CSS for animations or interactivity. In theory CSS does a lot. In practice it's a nightmare to use and to get it play well with whatever else I'm doing in the page. Write in "bare" HTML and "vanilla" JavaScript. Don't use a static site generator and don't use a JavaScript framework. Port in JavaScript libraries as needed. Some of the ones I tend to use are numeric.js [3], downlaod.js [4] and audience-minutes [5]. If you're doing spreadsheet things, maybe there's some JS package out there that will help. Doing "raw" HTML/"vanilla" JavaScript makes me effectively unhirable but for limited scope side projects where I have full control and want to minimize bit-rot, this is fine. The point is to create something that's minimal and focuses on functionality. The CSS is just there to make it not look like a Web 1.0 page but otherwise steps out of the way to focus on the actual usage of the application. For context, here are some projects where I've used this philosophy (all open source, feel free to pilfer): Noixer [6], Resonator Voyant Tarot [7], Boston Train Track (now defunct) [8], CalebHarrington.com (an artist friend) [9], What Is This License [10], HSV Hero [11]. [0] http://getskeleton.com/ [1] https://getbootstrap.com/ [2] https://jquery.com/ [3] https://github.com/sloisel/numeric [4] https://github.com/rndme/download [5] https://github.com/berthubert/audience-minutes [6] https://mechaelephant.com/noixer/ [7] https://abetusk.github.io/ResonatorVoyantTarot/ [8] https://github.com/abetusk/bostontraintrack [9] https://calebharrington.com/ [10] https://mechaelephant.com/whatisthislicense/ [11] https://mechaelephant.com/hsvhero.

#CSS Framework #Development Tools #Design Tools 326 social mentions