We've seen real change in rhetoric in web space. It seems like PHP (through Laravel in particular) is so back into being vogue. And that brings me joy.
HTMX, Laravel, Livewire, alphine.js are all the things that are what these insane JS SPA frameworks aren't. Simple and intuitive.
PHP doesn't care about the young coders' vogues. Just like SQL doesn't care about the NoSQL crap. It's still here and is going to be for the next few generations.
I'm a JS guy and I'm convinced this way of orchestrating the UI from the server is really the future of full stack dev.
At least to solve 80-90% of use cases. There are still some situations that require client side components with APIs but it's really a minority. Doesn't make sense to focus all your efforts into a complex solution that is appropriate for a minority of use cases.
I was giving the major FE frameworks an honest try until they all started to move to server components. Blackpill moment. “Wait a minute…rendering HTML on the server…I THINK I’VE DONE THIS BEFORE (with a lot less boilerplate insanity)”
Only ever seen it praised in these threads specifically about PHP on HN. Where everyone who uses it says how amazing it is, and oddly enough, has no negatives to talk about.
PHP doesn't have many negatives. Even the go-to negatives aren't really. Many cite "rebuilding the environment everytime" as a con, but it's a pro in terms of horizontal scaling/load balancing. I for one would like PHP to have generics. It doesn't have that and plausibly will never have it (without a superset like TypeScript for JS).
HTMX, Laravel, Livewire, alphine.js are all the things that are what these insane JS SPA frameworks aren't. Simple and intuitive.