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Ask HN: Do we need JavaScript web frameworks?
This may well be a controversial question, but as a developer who hates doing UI work, but would like to be able to build UIs for my projects I often find myself wondering why not build and render everything on the server?
Thinking about the internet I assume this is how most stuff worked in the past, and clients had little logic. We now have Vue, React etc and really heavy websites.
So I would like to understand is there a level of complexity at which a UI framework is needed? Do people build UIs using for example Python? Why not have a Python lib to build a full UI?
- throwaway888abc 5y agoDid you build and maintain UI ? Pick the approach whits suits you best. Also note - Hotwire Hotwire is an alternative approach to building modern web applications without using much JavaScript by sending HTML instead of JSON over the wire https://hotwired.dev/ https://hotwired.dev/
- ale_jacques 5y agoThere are some alternatives: - https://htmx.org https://htmx.org - https://unpoly.com https://unpoly.com And, as mentioned by @throwaway888abc, there's also https://hotwired.dev/ https://hotwired.dev/
- dennisy 5y agoThanks! But I was actually hoping to avoid doing any front end work, but rather using a backend language to build the UI which would be converted to HTML for me!
- pdenton 5y agoI build all my client side JS with this: http://vanilla-js.com/ http://vanilla-js.com/ (And a copy of the ECMAScript specification.)
- dennisy 5y agoYeah this is fair! And loving the site never seen that before :)
- trs8080 5y agoany backend api/framework layer (django, fastapi, flask, etc) + templates. also not a controversial question -- there's a "does anyone else hate javascript/react?" thread on HN pretty much every week or so. if you don't need a frontend framework, don't reach for a frontend framework.
- shanghaikid 5y agoIt depends on what you do. If it is simple page, vanilla js is enough. If it is a simple page application, using vanilla js is ok, but eventually you will find you need a framework or your code base is already a framework.
- mathiasrw 5y agoIf you don't pick a framework, you will end up building one yourself.