Marko – An isomorphic UI framework similar to Vue

I&#x27;ve focused on backend for the last 7 years or so, so I&#x27;ve been kind of out of contact with the frontend world. Recently I started working on a personal project, and I thought it would be a good time to learn some of the modern tools people have been using for frontend dev.<p>I was completely baffled by the myriad of options out there, how complex they look (note I&#x27;ve been working on very high performance, distributed backend applications, so complexity on itself is not an issue), and how it&#x27;s very unclear when to use any one of them or what each one is good for. I tried Angular and React, and both feel like almost a different language. You have to learn their internals to work effectively with them, and it often looks like they create more complexity then the original complexity they were trying to reduce. I have no problem learning new things, in fact, I love it! It just feels like there are other things to learn that will stick around for longer - JS frameworks&#x2F;libraries seem to be very hype-driven these days. What are your thoughts on this?

Nowadays I only consider switching front-end frameworks if there is a substantial conceptual improvement. React did this for me due to its uni-directional dataflow and component-based architecture. There is nothing new here conceptually.

I&#x27;ve discovered Marko in one of the various react-alternative topic that emerged yesterday and it looks like something sane, which is rare in the js ecosystem. I&#x27;m wondering if anyone on hn used in in a real world project and how it was.

Meanwhile in real reactive environments:<p><pre><code> import QtQuick 2.7 import QtQuick.Controls 1.1 Rectangle { property real count: 0 Column { Text { text: count color: &quot;#09c&quot; font.pointSize: 24 } Button { text: &quot;Click me!&quot; onClicked: count++ } } } </code></pre> Also the so-called &quot;60fps smooth&quot; animation has noticeable stutters on Firefox on linux.

So many new UI frameworks, yet no one really mentioned SmartClient.com (LGPL licensed).<p>I&#x27;ve been using it for almost 10 years and some of the concepts they pioneered have only recently been discovered by the new kids.<p>I still use it, though some of the &#x27;fixes&#x27; they had to put in place to support old browsers are often polluting the DOM unnecessarily in modern browsers (this is something I hope they fixed).<p>My favourite aspects of it are that I can declare components declaratively, it has a technique called autoChildren that allows managing a tree of components as a flat set (useful for complex components like tabsets), and the data binding layer. The documentation is top notch (which it needs to be given the depth of stuff in there).<p>Again, all of this was around in 2009 since when I started using it - and not sure how many years before I found it they&#x27;d been going.

I just skimmed the page and seen that sort coloured of sine wave... Then read «The above animation is 128 &lt;div&gt; tags. No SVG, no CSS transitions&#x2F;animations. It&#x27;s all powered by Marko which does a full re-render every frame.».<p>Well, as soon as my browser renders that thing, the browser process reaches 122% cpu usage (according to htop). And i&#x27;m using a 4th gen core i7 processor. I can literally (literally in the literal sense of the word) hear my fan spin up. That <i></i>hurts<i></i> battery so much.

Don’t abuse the term “isomorphics”. To prove 2 groups are isomorphic mathematically you have to show there exists a product preserving map between the groups.<p>Just kidding.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dayssincelastjavascriptframework.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dayssincelastjavascriptframework.com</a>

Quick question, is there anything conceptually interesting about Marko thats different in ideology and structure from Angular and React or Vue?<p>For background to why I&#x27;m asking: I&#x27;m an IOS mobile dev and was a web dev before and I often use web dev structures and ideas as there is less structure, frameworks (unless you count RxSwift) and general philosophies I find in IOS mobile dev aside from best practices and tips like avoid Massive View controllers, etc.

Ecosystem is so important these days, there might be technical reasons for choosing this but considering the support (knowing stack overflow answers will be available) and pre-existing component ecosystems for Vue &amp; React, I can&#x27;t see a reason anyone would pick this.

Here&#x27;s a great introduction to Marko by its main dev:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=i6eZA8Y_GgA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=i6eZA8Y_GgA</a>

Isomorphic UI? WTF??<p>What&#x27;s next, homotopic web frameworks and commutative app diagrams???

For those interested in spreading this on PH: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.producthunt.com&#x2F;posts&#x2F;marko-js" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.producthunt.com&#x2F;posts&#x2F;marko-js</a>

I don&#x27;t believe the marketing when it says that working with something is &quot;fun&quot;. Working is maybe enjoyable sometimes, but it will stay hard work if you&#x27;re doing it right.

You had me at isomorphic.

This looks pretty decent.

Yay, another front end framework! &#x2F;s

Oh hi there, yet another awkward not-really-html-not-really-js templating language<p><pre><code> class { onCreate() { this.state = { count:0 }; } increment() { this.state.count++; } } &lt;div&gt;The current count is ${state.count}&lt;&#x2F;div&gt; &lt;button on-click(&#x27;increment&#x27;)&gt;Click me!&lt;&#x2F;button&gt;</code></pre>