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