service ui

different ways to present a service

It's been 4 months and I've already refactored a service 4 times

server side templating

pros:

• one thing to manage
• internally consistent
• can be pretty (if you can bear writing css)

cons:

• tightly bound
• write html and css

client side rendering json api

pros:

• separating front and back end
• can be pretty (if you can bear writing css)

cons:

• javascript, so heavy
• json
• consistency is hard
• html, css, and javascript

client side rendering grpc-web api

pros:

• separating front and back end
• versioned, backward compatible apis
• can be pretty (if you can bear writing css)

cons:

• javascript, so heavy
• grpc-web is still weird wrt load balancing / routing / caching
• html, css and moer javascript

chatbot Dialogflow

pros:

• backend only, no need to write frontend
• auth by default
• magic processing
• multiplatform

cons:

• magic processing
• least common denominator of platforms
• no push
• ugly

chatbot Telegram

pros:

• backend only, no need to write frontend
• auth by default
• push messages

cons:

• ugly