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I'll probably try it. But man, am I getting jaded about all this javascript framework stuff. Every 6 months stuff breaks, every 2 years there's a huge shift.

I'll probably try it. But man, am I getting jaded about all this javascript framework stuff. Every 6 months stuff breaks, every 2 years there's a huge shift. The problem with javascript I've been facing is value. Time and effort doesn't always correlate to what I get in the other end. In fact, I can say when building, going single-page is a time sink. And it's almost always a mistake to go SPA first. Using a django or a rails lets you get the basics and data flow nailed down early on. Get into a framework too early and have a need to change something? Have fun explaining to your manager/client how costly it is to do a "simple" modification to a JS app when you have to throw the state you built it upon out the door. What I want is a system tightly coupled into a server-side framework like a Django or a Rails that degrades gracefully and I only have to program the interactivity one time. Something that'd plop right into the asset pipeline/django compressor so I don't have to go outside of the framework to build. Hundreds of hours of my life have been spent chasing this dream of sharing server side code with client side JS frameworks. That's what I need. Meteor didn't do it for me. As for rendr, I've done stuff better with backbone/express in-house. As of 2017, I get my best bang for the buck using django and pjax. No joking, I went from full DRF + Backbone Marionette -> to plain old jquery and pjax and couldn't be happier. All these new build tools (grunt, gulp, webpack... come on), ES versions (I was ok with ES5). None of these things are helping me ship stuff ahead of / on time and correctly. They're creating an even larger gap between the server side data, logic and templates and the JS interactivity. If anyone is listening, I'd love to have a well-supported opinionated distribution of django or rails that just renders forms, tables, etc. with angular/react/etc. and degrades gracefully.

coding123 10y ago
I'm actually really excited about Angular "2+" for something you've expressed here. I know that a React developer won't see this the same way, but I really feel like it's come down (for me at least) to either Angular "2+" or React - and whatever the reason someone is going to be on one side of the fence or the other. I've written smallish to largish programs in Vue, React, Ember, Polymer - and in all of those cases tried, wherever possible to do so in RXJS and Typescript. When everything else shakes out, I'm finding that nothing is coming close to the RXJS and Typescript combination "sweet spot". There have been various attempts to make a lot of the other frameworks "typescript friendly" but it's just nowhere near. So why is Rx and Typescript so important to me? Well specifically those two are kind of like the drug that once you try them, you literally can't go back. I've been wanting this level of type checking for 10 years on the front end. I am not willing to lose it now. As for Rx, it's the one true way to do async flows. Promises and Callbacks just end up creating large pyramidic code.
- philplckthun 10y ago
  I think Typescript can sometime have a mind of its own, but it's certainly an enrichment and with Rx everything just falls into place. At this point it's hard to ignore that all the UI libraries are just paradigms and patterns, and how we use them is getting less important. These days I just want to write Component-style UI code, and I'll be fine. Similarl things can be said about RxJS, but I think since it's a different level of abstraction, it will hit much harder, once it gains more traction. And it's already building up a solid community much faster than before. the only thing standing in the way of people learning RxJS is the same as Angular / Vue / React. It's scary and there's a lot of fatigue still. I hope that this year is thus going to be even better for teaching. ^^ Tldr; RxJS is going to be huge, if we can teach it more and JS fatigue calms down.
  - robwormald 10y ago
    We've got some really cool ideas to make Rx really first class in Angular. It's already pretty deeply integrated, but with a little work, it'll be awesome.
    - philplckthun 10y ago
      definitely agreed! It's become one of the biggest "advocators", so to speak. But I think people will want to learn it as a default, async primitive in JS as promises now are. Not saying support from Angular and other projects and also companies doesn't help, since it makes it look less like a "scary, new thing", but I think more people should start to teach it's benefits to be frank and blunt about it ;)
      - robwormald 10y ago
        absolutely. we're 100% invested in Rx, and more than anything else I'd like to see the Observable type standardized.
    - cormacrelf 10y ago
      What are they? I've been developing with the @ngrx suite, and it's been mostly pretty smooth, what more do you want? I would like to see a piece of documentation that lays out explicitly what happens when you pass around Observables. Hot ones, cold ones, when the auto-unsubscribe clicks in, whether this.property$ = some_observable(); this.property$.subscribe(fn); ... will auto-unsubscribe (does it? who knows... try it?), what happens when you async pipe and its interaction with ChangeDetection...
Arcsech 10y ago
Intercooler.js may be along the lines of what you want, when combined with partial views.
keymone 10y ago
> sharing server side code with client side JS ever looked into clojurescript?
cobookman 10y ago
Look into polymer. Let's you do server side rendering then use custom web components for the widgets needing interactivity. I found building sites this way refreshing.
- ergo14 10y ago
  Yeah, I've been using polymer for quite a bit of time. It is very easly to pick up, small, fast and interoperable with everything else.
nickik 10y ago
You should try ClojureScript. Much simpler tooling (native tooling on top of Google Closure), nice integration of server and client side code. We are not quite at the point of using NodeJs on the backend normally (and honestly the JVM is 100x better) but you can share the language. You want get a django or rails like app at the moment.
kabes 10y ago
What were your problems with meteor? Because that sounds exactly like what you're asking for
bigmanwalter 10y ago
Preach brother. I've been saying the same thing for years now after a similar experience moving from an Angular SPA to a Django + Pjax app. I noticed an order of magnitude increase in productivity.I can't imagine going back now.

coding123 10y ago

I'm actually really excited about Angular "2+" for something you've expressed here. I know that a React developer won't see this the same way, but I really feel like it's come down (for me at least) to either Angular "2+" or React - and whatever the reason someone is going to be on one side of the fence or the other. I've written smallish to largish programs in Vue, React, Ember, Polymer - and in all of those cases tried, wherever possible to do so in RXJS and Typescript. When everything else shakes out, I'm finding that nothing is coming close to the RXJS and Typescript combination "sweet spot". There have been various attempts to make a lot of the other frameworks "typescript friendly" but it's just nowhere near. So why is Rx and Typescript so important to me? Well specifically those two are kind of like the drug that once you try them, you literally can't go back. I've been wanting this level of type checking for 10 years on the front end. I am not willing to lose it now. As for Rx, it's the one true way to do async flows. Promises and Callbacks just end up creating large pyramidic code.

philplckthun 10y ago
I think Typescript can sometime have a mind of its own, but it's certainly an enrichment and with Rx everything just falls into place. At this point it's hard to ignore that all the UI libraries are just paradigms and patterns, and how we use them is getting less important. These days I just want to write Component-style UI code, and I'll be fine. Similarl things can be said about RxJS, but I think since it's a different level of abstraction, it will hit much harder, once it gains more traction. And it's already building up a solid community much faster than before. the only thing standing in the way of people learning RxJS is the same as Angular / Vue / React. It's scary and there's a lot of fatigue still. I hope that this year is thus going to be even better for teaching. ^^ Tldr; RxJS is going to be huge, if we can teach it more and JS fatigue calms down.
- robwormald 10y ago
  We've got some really cool ideas to make Rx really first class in Angular. It's already pretty deeply integrated, but with a little work, it'll be awesome.
  - philplckthun 10y ago
    definitely agreed! It's become one of the biggest "advocators", so to speak. But I think people will want to learn it as a default, async primitive in JS as promises now are. Not saying support from Angular and other projects and also companies doesn't help, since it makes it look less like a "scary, new thing", but I think more people should start to teach it's benefits to be frank and blunt about it ;)
    - robwormald 10y ago
      absolutely. we're 100% invested in Rx, and more than anything else I'd like to see the Observable type standardized.
  - cormacrelf 10y ago
    What are they? I've been developing with the @ngrx suite, and it's been mostly pretty smooth, what more do you want? I would like to see a piece of documentation that lays out explicitly what happens when you pass around Observables. Hot ones, cold ones, when the auto-unsubscribe clicks in, whether this.property$ = some_observable(); this.property$.subscribe(fn); ... will auto-unsubscribe (does it? who knows... try it?), what happens when you async pipe and its interaction with ChangeDetection...

Arcsech 10y ago

Intercooler.js may be along the lines of what you want, when combined with partial views.

keymone 10y ago

> sharing server side code with client side JS ever looked into clojurescript?

cobookman 10y ago

Look into polymer. Let's you do server side rendering then use custom web components for the widgets needing interactivity. I found building sites this way refreshing.

ergo14 10y ago
Yeah, I've been using polymer for quite a bit of time. It is very easly to pick up, small, fast and interoperable with everything else.

nickik 10y ago

You should try ClojureScript. Much simpler tooling (native tooling on top of Google Closure), nice integration of server and client side code. We are not quite at the point of using NodeJs on the backend normally (and honestly the JVM is 100x better) but you can share the language. You want get a django or rails like app at the moment.

kabes 10y ago

What were your problems with meteor? Because that sounds exactly like what you're asking for

bigmanwalter 10y ago

Preach brother. I've been saying the same thing for years now after a similar experience moving from an Angular SPA to a Django + Pjax app. I noticed an order of magnitude increase in productivity.I can't imagine going back now.