This is an excellent breakdown, thank you for writing it! However, I think we need to settle on the main use case for LiveView here which is not to go head on with JS attempting to replace it, but rather provide a first step into having interactive UIs, similar to what Rails initially had with RJS. The fact that LV provides hooks by leveraging JS libs that already exist can already get you to a good middle ground, without that I don’t think there would even be a discussion.
I agree that it would be madness to even consider LiveView, which is not even 1.0 yet, on any mid to large size projects, but still think it is much more viable when boostraping an idea with a few developers. This is quite uncharted territory, though, as you mentioned, most UI devs know JS and would be very uncomfortable with the idea of learning a functional programming like Elixir, so the path of least resistance would be to just stick with the status quo, as it is with any other new idea.
What worries me a bit is that we are already so far out in web development that any app that wants to compete in the space needs to be really polished, and the tools to get that polish are all deeply ingrained in the JS ecosystem, so competing in this space seems a bit futile. My bet is that LV will really shine in development time for apps that will take full advantage of all the connectivity benefits that Elixir provides, we just haven’t seen much of this new class of apps yet.
