Mixing things up

One good practice when dealing with complex systems is to keep cognitive load down. Use one single language, one framework and a well known runtime. This article is an experiment exploring the opposite of this recommendation.

Why to mix several technologies

To be more accurate, polyglot projects are the norm for a long time now. The Unix Way isn't present on large software projects anymore.

We mix technologies to produce something bigger.

We should not mix, however, overlapping technologies. There should be just one language or framework best suited for frontend/ui, one for backend/business logic and one for direct data management.

In a way, the distinct technologies are not mixed. Yet here they are, in the same project, with distinct build strategies, producing one single solution.

Tools to mix things up

When building a modern web application, the output usually is html, javascript and css. But the ways to achieve that, well, those vary a lot.

Web frontend

It is possible, in order to get productivity, add another degree of indirection by adopting a javascript framework like Angular, React, Svelte or Vue.

Those frameworks may or may not demand a dedicated cli tool to make development possible.

So, how to mix those web frameworks?

Mo perfect solution so far, bu parcel comes closer.

Since it supports multiple entry points and rely heavily on urls to decide how to transform the resources, it is possible to mix not only frameworks but also languages (javascript and typescript) with little friction.

Static templates

Another scenario is static or dynamic content generation on the server side. Although the previous listed frameworks offer some capabilities on this, they are not the best suited ones for that.

Template languages able to render html and css are the ones for this use case, sucha as pug, thymeleaf, markdown, nunjucks and others.

Aside dedicated server side engines to deliver it on demand, the tool to render any template written in almost any language is the eleventy static generator.

Server side runtimes

For servers, things get messy.

Java projects can be configured to also support Groovy and Kotlin almost out-of-the-box if gradle is the build tool.

It is possible to mix C and C++ in node.js projects with little friction.

Conclusion

In the end, the best approach is to try to keep thing simple as long as you can.

Complexity will come anyway, don't rush into it.

Happy Coding!