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Comment by makeee | Hacker News Reader

Hey HN, my goal with Divjoy is to make it ridiculously easy to start a new React project. You just select all the things you want in your codebase (UI kit, React framework, auth provider, analytics, form handling, etc), pick a template, then export it as a complete codebase that you can keep building on. All the UI logic like routing and auth flows just works. It also has a built-in editor which I think is pretty nifty. You can view the entire component hierarchy right in the tool and drag in pre-built sections from the component library. I'm planning on building out a large library of components across all the major UI kits (Bootstrap, Material UI, etc) and adding support for Next.js soon.

This was by the far the most difficult project I've ever built. Would love to hear your thoughts and happy to answer questions.

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This is awesome! I am a frontend noob and I've been learning a whole lot of things last 4 weeks and got a Vue SPA with Cognito auth, AWS amplify, Quasar and Vuex. I don't like the output I see in the browser and it pisses me off really. I am yet to cover UX, CSS/Stylus/SCSS and I see a bunch of bundle size warnings that I've no idea how to fix. For people like me, this project would reduce the bootstrap time significantly. I see you plan to add support for Vue etc but man, you're building something very valuable. Kudos.

Thanks for the kind words! Totally understand the frustration of trying to piece everything together. Been there many times and why I finally decided to give this idea shot :)

I love the idea and I’ll use it !!! One question: apart Framework can we have a ‘Not needed’ option for all other features? What if I want authentication with no styling at all..... Thanks a lot and keep up !!,

Yeah, I'm definitely considering that. Basically just wanted to wait and see if anyone asked for it. Out of curiosity, is that because you'd like to use a different UI kit or do you generally write styles from scratch?

I think a lot of people prefer to write styles from scratch. At least I haven't seen these UI kits being used much around me. I tried using one a couple of times and while it's great for getting something on the screen quickly, it turned into hell when I wanted to customize the look. Also it emitted embarassingly large bundles.

Yup makes sense. Technically it would be pretty easy to add this so will keep an eye on feedback and try it out if I see a good number of requests.

Yeah, having styled-components (not a UI framework) included in the boilerplate would be pretty awesome for something like this.

Yeah looking into adding Styled Components and Emotion support. Should be pretty easy since all custom style is already stored in a json format and scoped to each element.

I was just going to ask that. I’m not big on using UI kits and prefer to use styled components. I like the idea of implementing Next.js

Great! Thanks :)

I'm using styled components too. But the idea is to have nothing unnecessary forced on you like an UI library, email subscription and so on

Yup makes sense! I've been getting this request a lot over the past few days so almost certainly going to add it soon.

It'd be pretty easy to strip the UI framework out if that's what you want - probably easier than starting with CRA :facepalm: I agree, though, this would be a great option.

Thank you, I think it is great idea and I love it. I need to play with it, but on the face of it, seems like solid idea and very useful tool. Thank you!

I personally like Bulma a lot and think it is useful, so either that or Material works for me.

Appreciate it! I'm a fan of Bulma as well, obviously :)

Very cool. Are you planning to open-source the tooling behind this? Or will you try to productize it somehow?

Would like to productize it, so no immediate plans to open source. But who knows!

If you do decide that, it would be super cool to make a license like Unity where it's free until a certain project revenue amount, then you do a percentage or something.

That could really induce testing and user adoption.

Interesting idea! Will certainly add that to the list of revenue models to explore and learn more about. Thanks!

I think most of the revenue would be from the small companies or agencies that need to make many sites fast on a regular basis. Once you have larger revenue then you wouldn't be using something like this — you would have your team.

Firstly, a big well done to you. This is absolutely amazing. I am pure backend dev struggling to get my idea up and running. This will solve my worry of auth and the initial design right away.

My questions: Is there a way to contribute? Are you planning to monetise this?

That's so great to hear! Please don't hesitate to reach out if you run into and issues. I'm going to be trying out some premium themes and components soon.

Fantastic this is sorely needed. React + Redux has so much boilerplate.

Love it.

Congratulations on making the Web a more comfortable place for Delphi expats.

Thank you!

Really cool -- and super-ambitious! Have you looked at Gatsby recently?

Hey Chris, yeah Gatsby is awesome! I use it on https://usehooks.com. They're doing some really interesting stuff with themes, component shadowing, and of course their whole graphql system. Not totally sure how Divjoy would integrate with all that stuff (or whether it should try) but going to be exploring that soon.

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