Datastar: Lightweight hypermedia framework for building interactive web apps • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by mexicocitinluez » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 1:22 PM UTC

nchmy wrote: post #30

bradly wrote: post #9

It isn't mentioned on the homepage, but Datastar does charge for the following features: data-animate - Animates element attributes over time. data-custom-validity - Adds custom validity to an element. data-on-raf - Runs an expression on every animation frame. data-on-resize - Runs an expression on element resize. data-persist - Persists signals in local storage. data-query-string - Syncs query string params with sig…

What a weird comment. Why bring this up unless you're just trying to make them look bad in a dishonest way? It is clearly documented on the site in multiple places. Moreover, they actively dissuade people from even buying the pro license because they are quite emphatic that most people/sites do not need any of these features. If you do need them, then it's a small price to pay for the functionality, as well as to mak…

> It is clearly documented on the site in multiple places.

Hold up, so then why is pasting THEIR documentation into a comment weird?

lol. This is an absolutely insane response to someone simply informing the commentors that there is a price involved in the pro package.

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

#132

Post by mexicocitinluez » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 1:23 PM UTC

sarchertech wrote: post #64

nchmy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a weird comment. Why bring this up unless you're just trying to make them look bad in a dishonest way? It is clearly documented on the site in multiple places. Moreover, they actively dissuade people from even buying the pro license because they are quite emphatic that most people/sites do not need any of these features. If you do need them, then it's a small price to pay for the functionality, as well as to mak…

This is an example of the entitled subset of people who come out of the woodwork whenever an open source project has any kind of monetization or even just a non-standard license prohibiting billion dollar companies from selling their project as a service. I guarantee the fact that I referred to a project with an anti Amazon clause as open source will piss some of the off so much that they’ll comment here about it.

op: copies information from the website

you: "How dare you!!!!!"

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

#133

Post by nchmy » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 1:23 PM UTC

markusw wrote: post #121

nchmy wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the only valid and reasonable criticism I've seen here so far, kudos to you. 299 is, indeed, inaccessible for many people. But, the devs live in places where things cost more, so its also a tiny price compared to the relative value that they provide. I do think that some sort of geo-relative pricing structure would be worth looking into, but how does one even implement something like that? Is there something…

What I've done in a project once is use Purchasing Power Parity: basically, there's an index for purchasing power, and you adjust your pricing based on that. It's implemented in some major payment platforms, like Gumroad: https://gumroad.com/help/article/327-purchasing-power-parity

Yeah, something like PPP seems to be the way to do it. But it seems non-trivial to implement in reality. Gumroad consequently charges 10% fees.

I think it is very unlikely that Datastar would implement something like this - but just as a matter of limited time, rather than lack of empathy with the situation.

Still, people are welcome to bring it up in their discord - perhaps they will actually do it!

And i say all of this as someone who lives in central america, and am building a nonprofit project for which i have zero funding assistance. I already bought the pro license (which is 60% of my monthly cost of living...), mostly just because i see huge value in it all and wanted to support them.

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

#134

Post by nchmy » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 1:26 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #127

nchmy wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its interesting, and telling, that that's the only part of my comment that you replied to... Anyway, browsers are built specifically to render HTML. And html/hypermedia is specifically meant to manage and transfer state. The web has lost its way. If you want to read more about this, this free book is a great start: https://hypermedia.systems/book/contents/ Or the essays at HTMX https://htmx.org/essays/ Good luck to y…

I don’t feel the rest was really worth engaging with. SSE is a really interesting technology but again, it’s frontend agnostic. You can build a great SSE solution with any other framework. I read about approaches like this and I still don’t see the reason to do them, beyond “because you can” and “JavaScript is bad”. The separation of data and display logic between server and client is a sensible separation of concern…

The entire point of frameworks is so that you dont have to engage with lower level things... D* makes it exceptionally easy to work with SSE and all sorts of web APIs.

that's fine that you dont see any reason to use the web as it was designed to be used. But I dont see any reason for me to engage any further with you.

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

#135

Post by anthonylevine » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 1:28 PM UTC

nchmy wrote: post #59

afavour wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my point is pretty straightforward. Datastar is a front end framework. If any frontend framework can’t survive HN traffic it’s doing something wrong in a truly unholy way. Surviving, or not surviving, a traffic influx is a backend restriction.

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.

>This is not only well documented

Please, I'm begging you to share this "well documented" fact that most frontend frameworks barely "handle" on the simplest of sites.

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

#136

Post by sudodevnull » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 1:28 PM UTC

skyfantom wrote: post #68

nchmy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a weird comment. Why bring this up unless you're just trying to make them look bad in a dishonest way? It is clearly documented on the site in multiple places. Moreover, they actively dissuade people from even buying the pro license because they are quite emphatic that most people/sites do not need any of these features. If you do need them, then it's a small price to pay for the functionality, as well as to mak…

Didn't find anything about this on the main page.

Author of Datastar here. Most people don't need pro and it seems like putting it on the front page is actually marketing it instead of people finding it as the need the features. Not only should most people not use the features we actively push against it. The only thing that's really super valuable is the inspector which is a Dev tool

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

#137

Post by sudodevnull » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 1:32 PM UTC

markusw wrote: post #121

nchmy wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the only valid and reasonable criticism I've seen here so far, kudos to you. 299 is, indeed, inaccessible for many people. But, the devs live in places where things cost more, so its also a tiny price compared to the relative value that they provide. I do think that some sort of geo-relative pricing structure would be worth looking into, but how does one even implement something like that? Is there something…

What I've done in a project once is use Purchasing Power Parity: basically, there's an index for purchasing power, and you adjust your pricing based on that. It's implemented in some major payment platforms, like Gumroad: https://gumroad.com/help/article/327-purchasing-power-parity

Datastar author here, neat idea. Join the Discord and talk to us about how to implement. We're just a few guys and just don't have the cycles to explore every option for every facet of the project. Some of this is pure overhead

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

#138

Post by sudodevnull » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 1:34 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #56

nchmy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what point you're trying to make. He shared examples of some immensely dynamic apps that are running on a potato and survived HN, showing that this simplifies things greatly and can scale. Hypermedia-first is a very viable, and simplified, approach.

I think my point is pretty straightforward. Datastar is a front end framework. If any frontend framework can’t survive HN traffic it’s doing something wrong in a truly unholy way. Surviving, or not surviving, a traffic influx is a backend restriction.

Data star is a backend agnostic backend framework that happens to have a 10kb on the frontend. You should probably read the guy before coming to conclusions on what it is

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

#139

Post by sarchertech » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 1:37 PM UTC

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #101

sarchertech wrote: post #94

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…

There are so many issues with doing something like this that it's almost never going to be financially viable for small companies.

- Some jurisdictions require some level of warranty, extended refund periods, or limit your ability to avoid liability for product defects.

- You need to spend time doing research to set prices for each country or region.

- You need to combat fraud from people trying to buy your product using a VPN from low cost regions.

- This one is a big one. Chargebacks tend to be higher from low cost of living countries. Payment processors will drop you if your chargeback rate gets too high. Risking a $25 chargeback fee and being dropped from your payment processor for $5-10 payments is often not worth it.

- There are only 20 million professional software developers in the world. If you say half of those are web developers and you are phenomenally successful and 1 out of every 1000 web developers in the whole world buys your software. That's 10k sales. At $5 per sale that's $50k revenue across the entire life of the product. $50k for a team of people isn't a financially viable endeavor.

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

#140

Post by jonathanstrange » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 1:37 PM UTC

nchmy wrote: post #82

jonathanstrange wrote: post #70

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.

Except the pro option is not "a few years later" it's available in pre-v1 and is a one-time lifetime purchase, not a subscription. And the framework and docs are so small and simple, that you can read the entire site in an hour or two, in which time you would have noticed the pro features and pricing many times.

At the risk of repeating myself, I was talking in general terms about the business model and the uncertainty about the licensing it creates concerning possible future features.

I wasn't aware that they are a non-profit organization and agree that my remark doesn't necessarily apply to them since they're not a business. If the pro subscription helps them to maintain the open source project without making any profits, then that seems alright to me.