Ask HN: As a backend, how do you do your sideproject’s front end?

4 points by tiotempestade 6 years ago | 5 comments

I really hate the JS ecosystem.. I’ve tried several times to adopt it and I just find the thing ugly as .... am I stuck?

rwoll 6 years ago |

A frontend does not require JavaScript. I've made quite a few useful MVPs and internal tools whose frontend solely consists of dynamically generated HTML pages served via a Python Flask server with Jinja for templating or a Go server with its native template/html package for templating.

If you want to polish the UI a bit consider throwing in some simple CSS—either handrolled or prebuilt with Bootstrap or Semantic UI.

This reply assumes the project serves the UI over the web. For applications that are not hosted apps, I've had CLI tools just spin up a local server with the UI for a quick proof of concept UI.

tiotempestade 6 years ago | |

For what I have in mind I would need a lot of UI around tabular data.. maybe it’s time I have a look at clojurescript.. thanks

rwoll 6 years ago | | |

If you're looking for some alternatives to play around with, I'd also suggest TypeScript (w/ React) or Elm (https://elm-lang.org/). If you like Haskell—and can work fluently in it—Elm is a joy!

ve55 6 years ago |

It depends on what you're building, but I've managed to make a lot of nice services with pretty minimal Javascript. This is obviously not possible for many types of services, but if you do need it, you could keep trying new frameworks until you find one that really works for you, or perhaps have someone else help you out or work on the JS.

tiotempestade 6 years ago | |

I’ve tried that several times. The thing is the “project” usually dies after some time due to the time a simple but complete SaaS takes to build. Also in my case, I have little to offer when it comes to share the frontend work. Thanks