Comment by dagss
7 hours ago
I am pretty new to frontend development (but have 20 years of backend)
I assumed I would need to use one of these libraries at some point. But, perhaps since I am using Svelte instead of React, whenever I ask AI to do something, then since I don't already use a component lib it just spits out the HTML/CSS/TS to do the job from scratch (or, depending on how you look at it, output the mean component from its training data).
I have to point out it should organize the code and give the component a dedicated Svelte file (sure I could fix AGENTS md to do that).
I think with AI the usecase for these libraries is much lower. If there is anything complex you need AI can build it in some seconds specifically tailored for you, so..
I've been dabbling in backend and frontend stuff for about 25 years now, but for the past 15 years or so I haven't really had to do any webby stuff for work (and that's kind of how I like it).
Recently I've needed to put together a few things as "proof of concept" for things like internal directories and catalogues, and it's one of those "How Hard Can It Possibly Be" situations where we've had folk prevaricating for months with outline drawings and sketches and mockups.
So I knocked together a backend for it in Django, which worked okay, and then styled up the raw template with MinCSS[1], and then to do stuff like "find-as-you-type" and other "magical dynamic page" things I used HTMX[2] which has been discussed here endlessly.
No need for AI sloppiness. Just write some code, look at some examples, stick in some styles, and away you go.
[1] https://mincss.com/examples.html
[2] https://htmx.org/
I've used HTMX-like approaches a lot for other apps and I've been pretty frontend-averse, but this time I'm doing something similar to a drawing program with lots of d3 and SVG etc, very much the "real usecase" for SPA. So I feel HTMX doesn't apply to this specific usecase.