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Dev Tools & Micro-SaaS Hacker News · 2021-10-14

Why is there no Django/Rails equivalent in the JavaScript world?

JS 世界为什么没有 Django/Rails 那种「一站式」框架?

At a glance · 30-second read
  • WhoHacker News · 2021-10-14 · 52 upvotes · 82 replies
  • The askWhy is there no Django/Rails equivalent in the JavaScript world?
  • The openingAn opinionated full-stack template with hosting: auth, payments, email, admin included.

What was actually said

“But why none of them are getting a real traction while node.js is popular for many years now?”

— Hacker News · 2021-10-14 · news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28861970…

Background and pain

The pain

Too much choice means indie devs assemble scaffolding instead of shipping product.

A buildable angle

The opening

An opinionated full-stack template with hosting: auth, payments, email, admin included.

How to validate it

  1. Read the whole thread and note the recurring scenarios — repetition is the density of the need.
  2. Search existing tools around "full-stack / DX" and check which single step they actually cover.
  3. Put up a one-line landing page, share it back to Hacker News, and see whether anyone asks about pricing.

Existing options

RedwoodJS, Blitz, Next.js + Prisma 模板

From the thread · top comments

My experience having written all of the above is that JS is significantly more fragmented, and also has to deal with a frontend-backend severed line. Rails, Flask, Django (and PHP, purely server side JS that generate HTML with templates like express) are basically all "backend serving frontend and templating". Front end JS is more of a "frontend + backend with frontend serving backend" in the form of server side rendering being more akin to running a browser, loading the frontend, and then serialising that to a page. This is the complete opposite of the above. It's kind of a different mindset,

— ev1

I think it's simply that (and this is from my memory only): Node.js was THE first back-end JS thing, and its "micro" philosophy kind of set the precedent for everything else that follow in that space. It was the time when people started to feel Django/Rails are cumbersome for some of their needs, too, so the MVC approach never caught on for JS devs. So I think it's just popularity. Pick whatever tool you deem suitable!

— nhgiang

At the start of node.js, I frequently saw full web applications written in it "traditionally", fetching data and writing it into pug/haml/jade/handlebars/whatever else templates (during the callback-pyramid-hell days). It was pretty much just another stack like a less opinionated django. People used express, returned HTML, etc. Then the SPA frameworks came into the fray, and I never really saw node.js being used server side like that much anymore.

— ev1
Open the source thread

FAQ

Where does this request come from?
From a public thread on Hacker News, posted on 2021-10-14 with 82 replies, filed under Dev Tools & Micro-SaaS. Read the full context here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28861970
What exactly are users complaining about?
But why none of them are getting a real traction while node.js is popular for many years now? Too much choice means indie devs assemble scaffolding instead of shipping product.
What could this become as a product?
An opinionated full-stack template with hosting: auth, payments, email, admin included.
What alternatives exist today?
Known options: RedwoodJS, Blitz, Next.js + Prisma 模板. These usually cover only one step of the workflow, leaving the rest manual.

More threads on this pain

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