Show HN: Duck – A Django-compatible framework with native HTTP/2 and Live HTML

3 points

3 months ago

I’ve been working on Duck, a Python web framework designed to modernize the development experience without throwing away what we love about Django. For years, the standard path for real-time Python apps has been Django + Channels + Redis + daphne + Nginx. It works, but the overhead is immense. Duck aims to simplify this by making high-performance features "native" rather than "add-ons."

Key Features:

- Native HTTP/2 & HTTPS: No need for a reverse proxy just to get modern protocol support; Duck handles multiplexing out of the box.

- Lively Components: Think Phoenix LiveView but for Python. Build reactive, stateful UIs that update over WebSockets without writing a single line of JavaScript.

- Django Compatibility: You can keep your existing Django models and logic. Duck acts as a high-performance transport layer.

- Zero-Dependency Automation: A built-in task system that replaces Cron/Celery for 90% of use cases.

- Real-time Observability: A built-in terminal monitor (duck monitor) to watch your app's hardware impact in real-time.

Why build this?

I love the Python ecosystem, but I felt we were falling behind frameworks like Elixir’s Phoenix or Go’s Fiber in terms of "out-of-the-box" performance and developer velocity. Duck is my attempt to bridge that gap.

Docs: https://docs.duckframework.xyz GitHub: github.com/duckframework/duck

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the architecture, especially regarding the Lively component implementation!

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