In a similar vein, I've found ClojureScript and Crate[0]/Hiccup to be a rather potent mix for solo web dev in Clojure. It's a liberating feeling to be able to effectively write your backend, frontend, and layout in the same language.
Thanks for the reference to crate, I'd never heard of it. I'd imagine the pushback on ideas like this is much less in homoiconic lanugages like clojure, since when all is said and done everything is an AST.