Best workflow between JS Frontend w/ Elixir backend as a solo-dev?

I’m going through a similar situation at the moment. I’d already evaluated a few of the options discussed in this thread and came to a conclusion - it depends

You haven’t described the problem space that your product is trying to solve. For my project, it involved a lot of use of the Twilio API. I started with LiveView and used React for the Twilio bits of the page. When I pushed LiveView hooks to their limit, I ported the whole page over to a React component rendered using Remount in a standard heex template. The React HOC that manages everything is getting pretty gnarly, so further down the line I might move most of that out to a SvelteKit app.

I’d say start with LiveView, as your pace of productivity will be much faster than all the extra work required by you trying to keep an API and SPA always working together, especially if you’re duplicating business logic on both sides. If/when you bring someone else on board, then you re-evaluate, or they might be fine with learning Phoenix.

Everyone in this thread raises some good points, but I think @thojanssens1 and @AstonJ are on the money.

IMO, if your idea is design heavy or requires a lot of client side interaction that LV isn’t suited for, then build it using whatever JS framework you like. If not, start with LiveView and push it as far as you can.

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Hey guys, thank you very much for all of your responses. I’ve decided to do my best to accomplish things in Live View. I have attempted learning this side multiple times but I’ve read much more and am willing to try again.

I think once I get it down I think @dewetblomerus is right that I will be able to iterate and build faster.

Thanks to everyone for their responses. I’ve read all of them and each one made me think about how I will proceed.

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Sounds wise!

I used a lot of front-end technologies before: PHP, Java, a lot of Rails, Phoenix + React, and I never felt so productive as with LiveView.

I think the learning curve can be a bit steep, but totally worth it!

Start with raw LiveView and then start learning PETAL stack. You’ll eventually find yourself even more productive if you leverage on components.

Good luck :muscle:

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