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by jwblackwell 558 days ago
Totally agree. React and Vue are overkill and bloated, and actually lead to a worse experience a lot of the time e.g. users starting at spinning loaders with broken browser functionality (like back buton)

A hybrid approach of server-side views with a simple lib like AlpineJS or HTMX for dynamic bits is far better in most cases. The initial page load is blazing fast because the server does the work. Then, for things like filtering or updating lists, you use the lightweight library for smooth, efficient updates. You get the best of both worlds—a super-fast initial experience and the ability to add dynamic features without the React baggage (and often-neglected backend).
2 comments
7sigma 558 days ago
I've been using Inertia.js with laravel and Vue and its been great, no need to write an API layer. You get the simplicity of writing server rendered with the interactivity of an SPA
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0xblinq 558 days ago
Same. Using it at work (although with React/Rails) and it works great. Best of both worlds with minimal drawbacks.
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globular-toast 558 days ago
I've generally agreed with this but found the UI (ie. HTML) story on the backend is utter shite. Namely it's usually been handled by templates which inevitably lead to ridiculously inconsistent UIs with so much redundancy. In contrast something like JSX is really good and makes building small components for reuse natural.

Fortunately there has been some change in this area. FastHTML is a batteries-included library for Python and there are numerous standalone HTML generation libraries that can be used with other frameworks like Django, e.g. htpy, htmy etc.

I've been using alpine on a static site and it's really quite impressive just how much of "the stuff you probably want js for" it covers. So much so that you can pretty much say "if you can't do it in alpine, maybe we shouldn't do it at all".

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jwblackwell 558 days ago
I am using Laravel Blade components which are effectively just fully server rendered templates in component style, so you get the benefit of that mental model.

Then you can just add Alpine as necessary.

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