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Historically there are a lot of different "languages" to create websites. Maybe "language" is not the correct word, as for example html is not a programming language. But it is a system consisting of keywords, delimiters and a certain syntax you have to use to make the machine do what you want it to do.

Initially, the web was designed to only show "hypertext", and CSS was added to get more variation in the way, text was rendered. Different new standars have entered the scene sinds then like PHP and Javascript to execute some program code. If you like, you can think of SQL as a scripting language too. JQuery brings its own syntax that differs from pure Javascript. Ajax is a very special thing with very special usage that has little in common with the normal JS syntax. And all new Frameworks like Angular or React add kind of a new language (ng-for) with new rules and new keywords.

Ok, it is what it is and we all are used to. But is it efficient?

In most programming languages you would try to hide all the technical details of a transaction like AJAX in some library to get better usability. Finally, you would end up with a single language and a bunch of libraries to use.

Most of the newer approaches like Angular or React try to expand the HTML syntax somehow to get program-like structures, but I would even not know how to call the result. HTML is no programming language, not even a scripting tool. It is hypertext. So, most of the tools are very limited in adding some loop-functionallity to HTML. But as soon as you need a bit more complex interaction like multi-level loops, the functionality is too limited...

In my opinion, HTML is still superfluous today. You can generate DOM elements directly using the HTML-DOM-API. But finally, you will still be working with most of the other approaches.

So, here is my question: Are there any recommendations to reduce the number of standards for web design? Maybe a JS-Library, that covers all aspects of web programming? Or projects, that try to unify the whole process of web interaction into one single language? Any recommendation is welcome!

Some years ago there have been some tools to mimic the work of the DELPHI-IDE for web design, but I do not know any projects that are currently still maintained.

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  • Please edit the question to limit it to a specific problem with enough detail to identify an adequate answer.
    – Community Bot
    Jan 7, 2022 at 15:04

1 Answer 1

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Consider using ocsigen. It is an Ocaml-like dialect which generates JavaScript (and HTML) and Ocaml on server side.

It is developed by Vincent Belat (who was researcher at CNRS or University Paris 7) and is now CTO of BeSport

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  • Nice! Never heard of it, but this is the kind of tips I wanted to get! Many thanks
    – Eckehard
    Jan 7, 2022 at 19:29
  • Feel free to upvote, or even email me. Jan 8, 2022 at 8:29
  • ocsigen looks appealing, they provide a uniform platform with the option, to decide, which part of the code should run on server or on client side. Do you have any practical experience with the platform? There is a similar approach with TMS webcore, kind of a cross-compiler to run with teh Delphi-IDE. Feels like developing native Delphi apps, but exports Javascript/CSS. Usability depends a bit on the overhead such an approach brings.
    – Eckehard
    Jan 8, 2022 at 8:50

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