Hypermedia

This is the second post in the series “Have Clojure UIs Taken the Wrong Path?”. The first post is here. How do we choose between building an application using a hypermedia approach versus the client-side SPA? This post won’t answer that question. But it will say how not to make that choice. A common heuristic is the spectrum that stretches between old fashioned “Multi Page Apps” (MPAs) for basic use cases, to Single Page Applications for rich client interactivity. ...

The Clojure community has focused on React-based solutions for complex front-end clients such as Reagent, Rum, Om, Re-frame, and Fulcro. For all their differences, they follow a very similar architecture, making heavy use of client-side state and using RPC for client-server communication. We will call this the “React+” approach. But is this the right choice? I will suggest the answer may be negative. My suspicion is that as web UI libraries advance, the problems they solve are not essential. Rather, the problems are accidental; they are generated by the React+ architecture. ...