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Datastar: Lightweight hypermedia framework for building interactive web apps

data-star.dev

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Re: Datastar: Lightweight hypermedia framework for building interactive web apps

#101

Not sure why the community is being so hostile like use phoenix or it charges or its hostile Like no its not. This is a genuinely cool project and most parts of it is open source and it can run on any language and its interesting that they are looking at a way so that they can fund the development of it in the process as well Its their project and they are the only ones entitled to really push things the way they wan…

The problem is that a small company still needs to provide support from their own very high cost of living country. $5 doesn’t cover the cost of you filing a single support ticket.

I understand it sincerely.

Is there some middle way that I could use these datastar attributes/paid offerings via lets say 5$ but I wouldn't get support from the team itself.

I think that they might have a discord server as well and so I am more than okay to take support from the community itself if I can be honest...

Simply because like me and others, we simply can't pay 299$ when we don't require support.

Could another tier be created that allows people to use it but just without any official support in the sense that maybe you could create github issues or something about it but don't expect mission critical of sorts...

I hope you can see things from my perspective as well & I know some companies / projects which also do something similar where they offer support seperately / at a higher price but using the product itself doesn't cost you / costs you very little and you can always use unofficial-ish help.

What are your thoughts? Do you think that datastar could integrate something like this?

Re: Datastar: Lightweight hypermedia framework for building interactive web apps

#102
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> exploring models This model of using deception to hide costs isn't exactly "exploring". It's tried and tested.

you're stretching the definition of deception here my guy-what do you want them to do? plaster a big sign on the landing page stating that this framework ALSO contains pro features that you have to pay for?

> what do you want them to do?

> plaster a big sign on the landing page stating that this framework ALSO contains pro features that you have to pay for?

Yes.

I for one don't enjoy being on the receiving end of these marketing dark patterns and manipulation tactics.

Re: Datastar: Lightweight hypermedia framework for building interactive web apps

#103
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical about this business model because it can become worse than proprietary software dependency over time. You get lured in by thinking it's open source and free, and might end up paying as much as the developer wants for essential features a few years later.

Like I said, it's crucial for the developer to be fair about it. Running a sustainable business built on open source is entrepreneurship on hard mode. Some companies do a better job at this than others, and, unfortunately, open source has been abused as a marketing strategy on many occasions. No matter how you look at it, though, any business model that enables users to use open source software is a much better optio…

They're not even running a business on this - its literally registered as a 501c3 nonprofit. Its a labour of love that theyve shared with the world, and they actively tell people that the pro features are unnecessary for most projects. If you want those features or just want to support the project, the cost is quite fair, and just goes to things like traveling to do conference talks etc... They are not getting rich off of this.

Also, they intend for v1, which will be released soon-ish to be essentially the final version of Datastar. There wont be a need for much further development. So there's minimal risk of "rugpull" or even abandonment.

Re: Datastar: Lightweight hypermedia framework for building interactive web apps

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that a small company still needs to provide support from their own very high cost of living country. $5 doesn’t cover the cost of you filing a single support ticket.

I understand it sincerely. Is there some middle way that I could use these datastar attributes/paid offerings via lets say 5$ but I wouldn't get support from the team itself. I think that they might have a discord server as well and so I am more than okay to take support from the community itself if I can be honest... Simply because like me and others, we simply can't pay 299$ when we don't require support. Could ano…

they do have a discord server, and it is full of excellent conversation. But I expect that you would receive a similar response to what we've given "sorry, but no. But, also, you dont actually need the pro features. Build with the free version and profit from it"

Re: Datastar: Lightweight hypermedia framework for building interactive web apps

#105
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see what you're saying. But again, the API design woes are subjective and I think it's perfectly fine to iterate on getting this to a nicer state. "Wrong" to me suggests a gap in the understanding of fundamentals or of how things work. If the ideas of Datastar are fine to all of us, and our issues with it are ergnomics, then that can be a more focused discussion.

> But again, the API design woes are subjective They aren't. This is not good API design > "Wrong" to me suggests a gap in the understanding of fundamentals or of how things work. Snide vaguely dismissive remarks don't make such remarks true. > If the ideas of Datastar are fine to all of us Who's us? Are these "us" in the room with us right now?

> They aren't. This is not good API design

Why isn't it a good API design?

> Snide vaguely dismissive remarks don't make such remarks true.

Agreed! I don't believe I was doing anything of the sort.

> Who's us?

People on this thread.

Re: Datastar: Lightweight hypermedia framework for building interactive web apps

#106
post #32

This post and other posts about datastar on the hn frontpage seem unnatural to me. It's like a marketing effort to astroturf this, especially with newly created accounts interacting with this...

That’s a common HN pattern. Someone posts something about “why I switched to x” and it inspires someone else to link to the the x website, or even to other similar projects websites, and they all make it to the front page. It’s just a common synergistic phenomenon.

Re: Datastar: Lightweight hypermedia framework for building interactive web apps

#107
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're stretching the definition of deception here my guy-what do you want them to do? plaster a big sign on the landing page stating that this framework ALSO contains pro features that you have to pay for?

> what do you want them to do? > plaster a big sign on the landing page stating that this framework ALSO contains pro features that you have to pay for? Yes. I for one don't enjoy being on the receiving end of these marketing dark patterns and manipulation tactics.

[flagged]

Re: Datastar: Lightweight hypermedia framework for building interactive web apps

#108
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What design do you think would be better?

Both Datastar and HTMX have the same issue: they want to pretend to be HTML. So they force themselves into writing several DSLs like this to pretend that this is still "just HTML". Since they have a full "Datastar expression" language, I'd just expand that. Then you wouldn't need these weird constructs:

Well they are both "just HTML", Datastar being better about being spec compliant using the dataset attributes and all.

By expanding the "Datastar expression" language, do you mean a compiled language or moving all the expressions into JS files or something else?

Re: Datastar: Lightweight hypermedia framework for building interactive web apps

#109
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could provide actual arguments for why these aspects of Datastar are "crazy", "even more crazy" and "wrong"?

What more do you need than writing something like `data-on-input__debounce.200ms="@get('/examples/active_search/search')"` in the DOM as being crazy and wrong?

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Re: Datastar: Lightweight hypermedia framework for building interactive web apps

#110
post #65
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, most frontend frameworks barely on even the simplest of sites. This is not only well documented, but most of them have now moved towards some sort of SSR hybrid - at great complexity cost.

I disagree with “most”. 99% of the sites featured on HN do just fine. OP is a talented developer that wrote a backend capable of surviving a ton of traffic. Other developers on the internet have written backends that cannot sustain a ton of traffic. The choice of frontend framework is separate from both. You can write a performant web app that uses React. I’m sure you can write one that falls over immediately with Da…

That's a fair point.

But I think that the real point that /u/andersmurphy was trying to convey was that hypermedia is VERY performant because immensely talented C++ engineers have optimized precisely this, for decades. The notion that "frontend" devs have that the DOM can and must be managed via JS is simply ridiculous, and is one of the primary things that datastar and hypermedia approaches in general are trying to combat.

In fact, he openly states elsewhere how the sites' backends are actually done in a deliberately dumb, unperformant way, where the backend streams the ENTIRE DOM with each sse message, which gets morphed into the DOM. He could have done something more granular, like streaming only the checkboxes that have changed, but it wasn't at all necessary because the dumb way worked well.

Moreover, the SSE streams benefit from immense compression ratios because somehow the compression window overlaps across messages. Something like 95+%, IIRC.

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