You might not need a frontend framework
06-03, 15:50–16:35 (Europe/Paris), Main Room

Javascript is eating the world, but it does not need to eat your project too!. In this talk we will explore lightweight frontend solutions for progressively enhancing a Django web page.


Javascript fadigue is real. As frontend development gets more and more complex, developers are required to learn a wide plethora of languages and tools to bring reactivity to their web apps.

Introducing a SPA framework into a Django project can bring a lot of complexity to the codebase, requiring context switching between two different languages (Python and Javascript) and expertise into a wide set of tools, like node, npm, webpack and babel. Accessibility and SEO can also be affected by the introduction of a SPA architecture.

In this presentation I am going to talk about taking a step back in front-end development and carefully weighting the pros and cons of introducing a Javascript framework into a Django project.
I will also show some examples of how to progressively enhance a web page, adding reactivity while maintaining the accessibility. We will explore some libraries like htmx, hotwire and alpinejs that can help keeping the frontend light and lean.

See also: Slides (2.2 MB)

I am from Porto, Portugal and I work as a DevOps engineer at Collabora where I maintain an internal time tracker and financial web application written in Django.
I've been using Django professionally for about 2 years having also done some full-stack development with node.js, nest.js and angular.

Github: https://github.com/ajcerejeira
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajcerejeira/