the-archive-public VS Bulma

Thanks! The game here is written in Inform7, and it was so difficult to make progress that it took me three years on and off to finish the game. So if you do it that way, beware :)

Abridged story: https://github.com/statico/the-archive-public/blob/master/Th...

Backend server: https://github.com/statico/glulxe-httpd

Just when we thought we'd seen it all, giants like Twitter Bootstrap, Foundation, and Bulma entered the scene. They made development quick and ensured consistent styling, but the flip side? Websites began feeling a bit too...uniform.

You guys can try https://bulma.io/ as a middle-ground. It provides some fundamentals styles that aren't married to JavaScript, so there are never any conflicts with any SPA version. It's not widely used, but it worked well for us before going to Material UI as the team grew and the designers wanted something everyone is familiar with.

Bulma

I like bulma.io's simplicity. Can create some responsive layouts pretty easily and the syntax makes a lot of sense.

Or maybe you prefer prebuilt components from popular frameworks like Bootstrap or Bulma? These give you ready-to-use styles for buttons, cards etc.—just import them into your project from Node modules!

We also add a local copy of Bulma CSS and a custom stylesheet in public/css to provide styling for our app.

I've come from the C++ realm back during the Bad Old Days before C++11, so I know exactly what you feel. My answer was to turn to Clojure and Clojurescript.

> I have considered Java and Go since I have experienced with both languages.

You might as well jump in with either of those. At the end of the day you will be fixing bugs and adding little new features. You can pick up most of the necessary things along the way, likely by fixing those pesky bugs! Probably the biggest takeaway I got from web development is security. Most non-web people never have to worry about that in a significant way. However most the web security problems are mature and well understood; everybody needs user auth, we're all sanitizing inputs, prevent SQL injection, etc.

In short, I think you will naturally come to grok the backend based on what you already understand.

> Write a web app? I've run away many times... it all feels so daunting.

I have rewritten this part three times, and all I can be is Sebastian from The Little Mermaid; The Frontend World is a mess. Life in the Backend is better than anything they got up there!

My advice is to mostly avoid a dynamic frontend if possible. Server-side rendered HTML still works and will work until the Internet falls into the sun. CSS can be a load of complexity, so I recommend you find a nice little CSS framework you like. Personally I reach for Bulma [0] as one of the less complex out there. If you need a little dynamism, note that every HTML element has a bunch of callbacks you can optionally attach JavaScript functions. The Mozilla Developer Network [1] is a godsend of documentation, and comparable to Javadocs in detail. It is huge but very exhaustive, so use search liberally.

When I can't avoid a dynamic frontend, I reach for Clojurescript and one of its React libraries. The simple reason is a backend developer like myself can make progress in something as messy as the Browser. Like actual JavaScript frameworks, Clojurescript structures how I approach and write frontend apps. Relatedly, Clojurescript makes it much easier to convince other backend Clojure developers to wade into the frontend waters and be productive. At the end of the day, its still a transpiler and so I work much like TypeScript and other dialects function.

Also as an anecdote, I bounced hard off frontend development several times before getting comfortable. This might be professional experience talking (see my second paragraph), but maybe it took getting real messy first before I became comfortable.

[0]: https://bulma.io/

[1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/

Here we are using Bulma to style our page, you can use your own stylesheet if you want.

For styling, we are using Bulma CSS. Todos will be added by typing in the input box. Nothing works now, as we still need to add the javascript.