JavaScript's Need for a Full-stack Framework
“Why Don't We Have A Laravel For JavaScript?”. This is the question Theo poses in his most ...
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You guys have completely missed AdonisJS. Backend JS framework built specifically to mimic Laravel.
adonisjs.com/
Adonis is mentioned in both the video and the article!
Yeah sorry I realized that after posting.
So the article I guess is not that JS frameworks haven't tried to go the Laravel route, it's that the ones that have done it successfully have just not gotten popular enough.
Honestly the problem is that the JS ecosystem moves too fast. There are too many new, shiny JS thing-a-jigs coming out all the time that are practically unmaintained after a few years. So even if someone comes out with something like this that truly is the (current) perfect solution, it gets ignored by so many JS devs because it's easy to assume it's just another new thing that will be forgotten in 2 years.
Laraval is successful because it was awesome but also it came out at a time where there weren't tons of big frameworks that felt "just right". Codeigniter was getting old, Symfony was super confusing and used too many "magic methods", CakePHP was a dinosaur. Laravel was timed perfectly and was simple and brilliant to use. Also the PHP "ecosystem" was extremely new. The idea of package managers was still very new.
The JS module based ecosystem is just moving so fast it makes it hard for anything to get traction. React got really popular because Facebook pushed it hard and because it was doing virtual DOM stuff the best of anything that had tried it before. Even now there are arguably much better solutions than React like SvelteJS but again, it's easy for dev's to ignore it because is it just the latest shiny thing (I know Svelte isn't). I mean when was the last time you saw a job listing for Svelte?
Anyways, good article. Thanks,
Yep. This is the point. Hopefully the js ecosystem is reaching a stabilizing point so that the right framework around it can be built (it seems to be case)
Agreed. AdonisJS may not have the popularity of the other frameworks, but if I were moving engineers over from Laravel and Rails, I'd pick this. Methinks Wasp is more like Terraform for JS and may be a cognitive jump from coding to configuration...
Vince I am thankful you took the initiative and time to write this article, it is important to have two sides in every argument and to show the whole picture so people can make their own conclusions, and this article brings the missing piece of argument to the video in question.
thanks for the support, Martin!
Good article! I definitely agree on the "loudest" comments. Everyone talks about Next because they have marketing and they have conferences but their alternatives do not. Personally I really like Adonis but they are not growing because they are quiet. I want a batteries included framework! Yes I have used Next, Nuxt, Nest, Adonis, and every other JS framework but I always go back to Laravel and Rails. In 1-2 lines in the terminal, I have a fully featured app with authentication, authorization, session management, validation, email, notifications, websockets, database setup, event queues, the whole nine, and with configuration all set up for me -- all under 10 seconds. And all of that is 1st party. The choice is simple! No JS framework, that I have used, comes close. Instead I have to choose between 3rd party alternatives and hope that some influencer doesn't make me feel bad on my decision, hope that whatever I choose has long term support, hope that whatever I choose is as robust as its Laravel/Rails counterpart, and hope that I don't have to replace whatever I choose with some new trendy alternative some influencer recommended. This process is absurd!
I subscribed to Josh Cirre recently, and he proposes that Laravel is the Laravel for JavaScript. Not everyone would be inclined to agree of course, but I certainly would!
youtube.com/watch?v=MGwgJeThQk4
A lot of the pieces are there already though admittedly there are some missing, for example I'd love a way to automate just running through your Laravel app and generating your TS types based on your models and resources, save you having to update all that manually.
we have that in laravel
github.com/spatie/laravel-typescri...
github.com/lepikhinb/laravel-types...
and many more
I knew it, I knew there would be! Thank you for this :D
Yes, I think that's what makes for that Rails-like feeling everybody is talking about. Is there anything preventing Laravel from doing that?
Awesome Post Vinny 👏
🙏
Vince, hats off to you.
The combination of memes and graphics always brings a smile to face!
haha thanks. no one has every commented on that aspect of the article. glad you enjoy them :)
This is a really informative overview! I especially love the chart with rails/laravel and others, that shows it takes time to develop such a framework.
Yeah that really helps put things into perspective:)
Program. Don’t follow trends. Less abstraction more thinking. 😀
tks author
ur welcome
Is there any PHP-like cheap shared hosting for Javascript or Ruby? URL?
Well after reading your post I'm still thinking he's right. Why? Javascript best feature it's also its worst feature which is: it grows to fast.
Having in mind this growth and what you're saying is that they take time, which it does specially for mature, but by the time it has mature enough there will be probably a better way to do the same or much of it faster and with new stuff in mind. I believe the best thing is to have the payloadcms approach, to grow alongside other tools.
Although thinking in a kind of "future proof" project would be to have EVERYTHING in modules that can be updated single handed without affecting the others. For example you want AUTH? Install the package that handles it and creates everything for you, you want to use MVC here's the module, you want GraphQL here's the other module, and so. Think this would be a better way to future proof it instead of bundling everything together and hiding everything behind.
Btw I have tested AdonisJS and I'm currently using it in a production project it won't be my default way to go as backend but will probably go to payloadcms and nextjs if the integration goes as great as advertised.
You should consider giving AdonisJs a good review
I sincerely hope not.
What can we do to sky rocket Adonis popularity?
Strapi is also a kind of laravel for js
Wasp again... mmmmmm
Comparison of performance to Adonis?
Is SvelteKit+Svelte not considered fullstack? What else do you need?