[TonyPeakman]

That’s a really good point — thanks for laying out the example so clearly.

You’re right: Aurelia can avoid a build step and still preserve flexibility, and the kind of helper you sketched (load_modules("thispage")) would definitely make the default case much less verbose while still allowing people to override pieces explicitly when they need to.

With dagger.js the initial choice was to keep everything explicit to reinforce the “HTML/JS/CSS are just independent modules” idea, but I agree that adding a convention-based shortcut on top could make the developer experience smoother without removing transparency.

In future iterations, I plan to add more flexible usage patterns to better meet diverse development needs.

[em-bee]

my main interests in a framework is minimalized boilerplate code that only exists to make the framework functions work, so that i can reuse code without the framework without much change or any change at all. and a html syntax that follows the standards. your syntax here has a bit of an issue because characters like * or + may be ok in HTML, but they are not valid in XML or XHTML, so they limit the usability in systems where interoprability with XML or XHTML is needed.

by far the biggest point is however is buildless application. while aurelia and vue and others can be used buildless, it's always a chore to get there because using build tools is still the default. buildless first, or buildless only is a big win. also because it encourages different optimizations that are more suitable for a buildless application. aurelia or vue are not optimized for buildless usage.

[TonyPeakman]

Thanks for laying this out — I share your priorities on minimal boilerplate and a buildless-first workflow. dagger.js is designed around that: no bundler by default, just HTML + JS modules, so most code stays reusable outside the framework.

On syntax: you’re right that +/* aren’t XML/XHTML-friendly. The short, stackable directives were chosen for ergonomics, but I’m considering offering a dg-* variant to improve standards compliance where XML/XHTML interoperability matters.

Appreciate the push here — keeping the buildless path the default while tightening standards compliance is exactly where I want to take dagger.js next.