Ask HN: Frontend as a Service?

2 points by fityfiritty ↗ HN
Frontend web development is complex. There are many developers out there with no frontend development skills writing frontend code out of necessity, resulting in less than ideal user experience.

Here’s the question: would you see potential in a service which

a) takes care of all the configuration for HTTP, TLS, compression, caching, as well as the process of optimizing images, minifying CSS and JavaScript,

b) would allow to define a UI in a simple domain specific language, building on a library of highly optimized, standard UI components, and

c) dynamically render templates of the above by sending and receiving data in a format that is trivial to parse and output in any language, in the simplest case by connecting to a server through SSH and executing a script written in any language, or in the less simplest case by connecting to a socket or whatever else?

The point is to enable a developer with no frontend skills to spin up a VPS and start writing application logic in any language, without frameworks and server configuration, with a professional UI.

3 comments

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> The point is to enable a developer with no frontend skills to spin up a VPS and start writing application logic in any language, without frameworks and server configuration, with a professional UI.

This is a variation on an idea that has been around a long, long time. And the results are usually something that is not all that great, and difficult to customize.

I’m not sure how much customization is desirable in a service like this, but in theory there’s nothing that prevents it to be customizable to the level a self-hosted solution is.

As for results not all that great, I’m genuinely interested in your concerns. I’m not convinced of the idea either, but I find it interesting.

Hello,

This sounds like a very interesting and unique project. Would you care to drop us an email with more details about it? admin@blueleafhosting(dot)com

Cheers!