I think OP is just focused on the tech layer, which is fine, but as a user, these are the things I love about piefed:

• Feeds (groups of comms) and Topics (curated groups of comms) -- instead of just Communities on Lemmy
• Scheduled posts, so the server will post my "Daily Game" entries for me every day (No bot needed!)
• "Moderating" view next to Subscribed, Local, All -- so I can quickly see all activity on the comms I moderate
• A list of "Related Communities", whenever you're in a post
• Flair for your posts in a comm, though only other piefed users can see that
• Excellent devs who listen when you report issues and are working hard to improve the service over time

Annnndd, the default web view (desktop and mobile) is fine, really. I thought it would be a problem when I had to leave my beloved lemm.ee account but no. It's fine. I GTD with them; it's really fast.

Like others said, OP, just sign up and check it out. I think you'll dig it.

You don't have to pick only one. Make an account on a piefed instance and try it out. It's not like it deletes your lemmy accounts when you do.

Though I will say, there's no good mobile app for piefed. Jerboa makes it point to lemmy.

lol just try it for 5 minutes. Accounts are free. You'll notice so many differences immediately.

They're different and have relative strengths and weaknesses. Despite being a contributor to piefed, I moderate a handful of communities on a lemmy instance and don't really have intentions of moving them. Overall, piefed is a lot less "mature" than lemmy, which makes sense because it is a lot newer of a project. It is getting better now about being more stable, but there are plenty of things that are still changing quite rapidly, especially on the api front.

As for python/pip/typing, I just don't see this as the major issue that some people seem to think it is. We aren't adding dependencies willy-nilly and the framework in which we are working (flask) is a very mature one that has stood the test of time. The fact that python is used for the project has tremendously helped the project in that it has allowed for a large number of contributions from many different people. Frankly, if piefed wasn't in python, it would not be nearly as feature complete as it is now thanks to the wide range of contributions we have received from folks.

the topics are really handy. like I look at comics pretty regularly. Without it I would need to go to dozens of communities and check for updates. Yeah you can be subscribed but if a new one comes out you will need to come across it and add it and also sometimes I just want to look at things around limited topic rather than everything im subscribed to. then I love the config options. in particular to not blur nsfw. I get so annoyed at the things people mark that way. Oh no. girl is showing to much ankle in this picture. I can also block by keyword but its limited. then I like this option which darkens bot posts a bit compared to standard ones so its easier to tell at a glance. Its pretty active to which I like. When I started I chose kbin and really like how active earnest was. Now one thing I I browse on the web and so most of the things I like are gui related which if your using an app does not matter so much.

I think I kind of like Python and the Flask framework. Sure it's duck typed. Other than that the Flask framework is very mature and battle tested. Minus a few quirks, it's laid out with some thought, is relatively nice and straightforward to use and once we leverage the advantages it should help us prevent some bugs from happening. And I think in practice, it serves us well. PieFed has a good track record compared to the average open-source project. It's nice to participate in the coding. Lots of things have been laid out in a very good way from early on. And it allowed us to move very fast.

(And I think in web development, a lot of potential bugs and security vulnerabilities aren't due to language, but complexity, frameworks and the lot of moving parts. I mean it's not the programming language that protects from an SQL injection. It's more convoluted/complex pieces of code that open up the entire server. I don't know the Rust web application frameworks, though. So I can't make any statement on how easy it is to write vulnerable code there.)

• PieFed was able to migrate the vast bulk of my Lemm.ee community's posts over here before that instance went down for good. It was quick, easy, painless, and has helped immensely in re-starting my community here.
• The scheduled post feature as mentioned is hugely useful, and something I plan to use more often when I get a little more organised.
• As mentioned, the instance here seems blazingly fast, perhaps due to the project being relatively small-ish at the moment.
• When our site-runner / dev has talked about what it's like running the place, it's sounded to me like it's been a remarkably low-fuss, non-stressful experience. Compare that to what the poor Lemm.ee site-runner went through, and it sounds like night & day.
• There's still a couple minor issues I'm hoping to see improved, such as: 1) as a community founder, I'd like the ability to be able to edit posts, especially my own that were earlier migrated over; 2) my old co-mod who's on another instance now is waiting to be able to be added as mod, here.

Many people made many good points, so i'll just add that according to this blog, Piefed is less resource intensive server-side (for now at least) than Lemmy.