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by nadermx·10mo ago·view on hn ↗
Tangential, but I practically owe my life to this guy. He wrote the flask mega tutorial in what I followed religiously to launch my first website. Then right before launch, in the most critical part of my entire application; piping a fragged file in flask. He answered my stackoverflow question, I put his fix live, and the site went viral. Here's the link for posterity's sake https://stackoverflow.com/a/34391304/4180276
16 comments
You have made my day, sir. :)
When I was in college I discovered the flask mega tutorial and fell in love with programming. Switched from an economics degree to software engineering and now work in the industry.

Thank you for the work you put in.

Absolutely love seeing like a dozen people piling on Mr Grinberg to show gratitude for his work, and indeed the even little things he does to help uplift others in the field. It’s a good reminder that a small helpful contribution, or bit of teaching given at the right time, can be so valuable!
I also want to say thank you for the Flask Mega Tutorial.

When I started my first job as a Data Scientist, it helped me deploy my first model to production. Since then, I’ve focused much more on engineering.

You’ve truly started an amazing journey for me.

Thank you. :)

Whoa! You're here! Well, I think a lot of us owes you a debt of gratitude. Thank you for all you've done for the Python and Flask community.
I also want to chime in and say how you changed my life. I did the same Flask megatutorial and that led me to leaving helpdesk and becoming a support engineer. Years later, and I'm now in big tech. Thanks Miguel!
Thank you for the Flask Tutorial, it got me started in web development and down the line into systems development.
I came way late to the game, so went more the video side, so I have the same feelings about Pretty Printed, love his stuff.

But just now checking out the Mega Flask Tutorial, wow looks pretty awesome.

Amazing to see all of the people thanking you! Great to see that gratitude is still alive and well. You seemed to have touched a lot of lives through that mega tutorial! wow!
I learnt a lot from your numerous Flask blog posts over the years. Your blog is often better than the official Flask docs. Kudos to you, Miguel!
I also used your tutorial to get started with web development and helped me get my first job about 11 years ago. Thanks a lot!
I too started with your tutorial - thanks a million
Rock on man
You got me into web dev. Thank you!
I also got started in webdev and built a few sitesdl from your tutorial. Thank you!
I also learnt a lot from your tutorial of Flask. Thank you.
> flask

Off-topic, but I absolutely loathe new Flask logo. Old one[0] has this vintage, crafty feel. And the new one[1] looks like it was made by a starving high schooler experimenting with WordArt.

[0] - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Flask_lo...

[1] - https://flask.palletsprojects.com/en/stable/_images/flask-na...

I hope they go Full Cracker Barrel on this:

1. Original logo has country charm and soul.

2. Replaced with a modern soulless logo.

3. Customer outrage!

4. Company (or open source project) comes to its senses and returns to old logo.

https://media.nbcboston.com/2025/08/cracker-barrel-split.jpg

(n.b. The Cracker Barrel Rebellion is sometimes associated with MAGA. I am very far from that, but I have to respect when people of any political stripe get something right.)

I was unaware of the new logo… and I am just realizing for the first time after many many Flask apps… that the logo is not a chili pepper.
Oh God, that's not it.

The old logo is classic and bespoke. I could recall it from memory. It's impressionable.

The new one looks like an unfunded 2005-era dorm room startup. XmlHttpRequests for sheep herders.

I didn't know that they have the new logo before reading your comment. Been 2 years since I last searched flask but yeah the old logo was vintage and I also preferred the old logo and the new logo feels mid/sucks.

The old logo is much better.

Huh. What most stands out to me about the logo, old and new, is that it clearly depicts a drinking horn instead of a flask.
The old logo would seem at home on a shelf of classic O'Reilly books. :)
I think it should not have a logo, so it is left to interpretation.

Thinking about hand-rolled web services, I usually imagine either a stealth alcoholic's metal flask or a mad scientist's Erlenmeyer flask.

Goodness gracious, that font in the new logo is the most hideous font I've seen in a very long time.
Love the new one
New logo looks like a device some tribes' men use to cover their member.
What the…? I guess I’ve been reaching for FastAPI instead of flask these days because I had no idea this happened. Didn’t all the pallets projects have the old timey logos? I wonder what happened.
It’s hideous!
yikes, that is not a great logo. it has also lost its essence
Counterpoint: The old logo looks like it's for a piece of software that stopped being maintained 15 years ago
Whyyyyyyyy
Yeah I yearn to go back to flask but the logo is giving me the ick.
For [1] they picked clip-art of a crown molding cross section.
Nice story! My guess is that the site was https://yout.com/ given your profile. Does it still run Flask?
Thanks for sharing this story. It goes to show how much of a difference being kind and helping a stranger can make.

Hope I'm able to do the same for someone one day :)

For anyone else wondering whether to click to find what "fragged file" means: no, it's not about Quake and the linked page does not mention 'frag' at all. The question asks how to stream a file to the client in Flask as opposed to reading it all into memory at once and then sending it on. I figured as much (also because e.g. IP fragmentation) but first time I hear this alternative term for streaming
Same! This tutorial from 2012 was one of the first things I did in Python. Coming from PHP it was so refreshing. https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial...
Similar story here. Pleasant to work with too.

The accessibility of this material and also the broader python ecosystem is truly incredible. After reflecting on this recently, started finding ways to give back/donate/contribute.

such inspiring story!! And please bring back: https://www.microphonetest.com/?lang=en

one day of vibe coding

Same here with following the mega tutorial. Truly one of the goats.
Same happened to me; I owe a career to having gone through his Mega Tutorial. Miguel if you're reading this, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
When I saw you were using readlines to read binary file I thought wtf at first, seems like he noticed as well.
The other answer to your question there is why Flask is so good. One short file and you have a backend and a frontend!
Yet another appreciation story for Miguel’s mega tutorial. In 2017 I used it to create our wedding site and learn a bit of web dev (my background is in data science). To motivate me to actually do it I used the strategy the fund the then occurring refactoring of the tutorial. I am still very fond and proud of that first time I actually went and funded some open source effort, it gives you back more than you might expect
We fixed the typo in the first sentence: ow -> owe. Hope that's okay!

Edit: corrected typo in "typo".

Cool story, but was your life really at risk in that situation?
Did you throw any money his way?