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Comment by la_fayette | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I am getting all wrong, but this sounds like PHP.

Yes, but the templates are written in JSX. No quoting nightmares, nesting is a breeze, the server side APIs speak like the browser ones, and it's really fast. With deno.dev hosting on the edge, it's server side like php, but way better. I used to like WordPress, now I love Deno.

thx for your comment, as i said i might get all wrong. Still think PHP template engines like Twig are well designed and make you highly productive. Personally, I feel JSX is a code smell, as it mixes UI snippets with code. But this is maybe my old school software engineering attitude. I am just waiting for the next OSCommerce package written in JSX...

> mixes UI snippets with code

You can never really avoid it unless you only use HTML. Templates are code. I think JSX is nicer because it's fully featured and the same syntax as regular JS, not a subset limited template language

I haven't used Twig, but have used other PHP templating engines. Scope is the big deal for me. JSX has actual scoping (it's just JavaScript), function calls, etc. PHP templates have one scope, even when you enter an included sub template.

Laravel released template components in version 7, but I haven't been able to try them yet and I'm hoping they'll improve things.

Exactly. I'm not a great fan of PHP but nothing has produced more killer apps in the last 25 years.

I'm excited for server-side rendering to return to the mainstream so that in a few years I can revolutionize the industry with my ingenious new idea to render things on the client with Javascript!

You might even land the ultimate innovation of doing both by "inventing" AJAX! (Just call it something new, like piped hydration)

Yes, because true innovation rarely happens quickly and most things are just cyclical and hype driven in software.

I'm patiently waiting until we either discover Java or reinvent it all over again.. but this time it will be cool because it won't be called Java, it will be rather "JMocha" and really drive that productivity you're looking for when mixed with your Latte's 3.0 strong typing.

I suppose I'll be in my not-so cool corner working in my monorepo, single server and outdated Rails app on Postgresql; If only I could achieve Github scale with that..

To me the part about:

"... and the client is only responsible for re-rendering small islands of interactivity. A model where the developer explicitly opts in to client side rendering for specific components. ..."

actually sounds more like ASP.NET (the original Web Forms, not Core) support for AJAX:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.web.ui.up...

I had the same thought. I read the islands overview and was had a little "what's old is new again" chuckle.

https://jasonformat.com/islands-architecture/

And not everything, just many things, was wrong with PHP. No build step was the norm for PHP the last time I wrote much of it. I love things like this, ES modules, etc, that make it easier to have build-step-free apps.

Things have changed quite a bit in PHP land, mind you.

PHP doesn't let you "opt in to client side rendering of specific components" though, without rewriting those components in JS.

Not a bad thing IMHO. Take the best parts of PHP but use the language you already know and like (modern JS or typescript).

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