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Ask HN: Has anybody moved from using a React SPA framework to Phoenix LiveView?

3 points| mmczaplinski | 3 years ago

What was your experience like and what challenges did you encounter?

I'm interested in the overall pattern rather than specific frameworks. So if you were using Vue/Angular/Svelte and migrated to Hotwire/Livewire that also works.

1 comment

tlack|3 years ago

Not quite an SPA, but we migrated our data-heavy site Classic.com from Next.js to Phoenix + LiveView + Surface.

Despite me being the only person with Elixir knowledge on the team at start, it only took our small team ~5 weeks to get a pixel-perfect replica of our most important set of page handlers.

Benefits:

  - 4X reduction in server resources while being faster and more responsive
  - Much more flexibility in how we implement things
  - Feels easier to maintain
  - Much better introspective capabilities (observing the running system)
  - SEO boost from better Google Lighthouse score (from mid-teens to mid-80s)

Challenges:

  - Definitely requires more thought to get certain things right; the component model is more complex (but more capable)
  - Fewer programmers with Elixir knowledge (but I think it's a benefit: never have to interview an idiot)
  - Little bit harder to configure for hosting/cloud but not too bad