[Exuma]

Without refreshing my knowledge on it, I don't think it's actually a string. A <template> block is actually a "single file component" which is a special vue plugin/loader/whatever for webpack. It compiles template/script/style tags into a single compiled version.

I'm like 60% sure that your "string' example is never run in production. So I believe that it gets compiled before vue even sees it (at build time, or dev-server compile time) into the standard method that vue is used to... a vue component:

    Vue.component('button-counter', {
      data: function () {
        return {
          count: 0
        }
      },
      template: '<button v-on:click="count++">You clicked me {{ count }} times.</button>'
    })

https://v3.vuejs.org/guide/single-file-component.html

[zkldi]

Then that sounds pretty good that it's not ran in production and compiled out!

I guess my remaining alien issue is that the DSL for Vue is a mish-mash of JS, custom syntax, dom attribute context and possibly more?

[Exuma]

I think it won't really make sense until you try the alternatives. I've used react since it's inception, vue, ember, angular (going back all the way to angular 1), knockout, etc etc etc.

All these frameworks try to solve what you're mentioning in different ways.

Obviously people have different opinions, but after seeing the way things are done from all these different frameworks, Vue is extremely "clean" and minimal feeling, while remaining extremely flexible. I have built multiple very complicated apps and there's nothing that I'm not absolutely DELIGHTED how it's solved, especially with the new composition API. It feels extremely elegant compared to the other ones I've mentioned.

Perhaps consider the alternatives, and you most certainly will have a much worse development experience if you're not willing to play ball with 2-way data binding (ie use html attributes to bind things, etc). As I said, other frameworks have tried other methods to minimize attribute use and they're excruciating to use. Ember is literally one of the most painful frameworks I've ever used to do even the most simple of things.

[lenkite]

Vue template HTML can be parsed by an HTML parser - lots of them available. Can you do that with JSX ? Personally, I find JSX is more of an "alien" than Vue template HTML.

[zkldi]

Well, no, because JSX is meant to be parsed by a JS parser and not a HTML parser.