BRHC Uses a Typed Kotlin DSL to Nearly Eliminate JavaScript, Targeting the Maintainability Debt of AI-Generated Web Apps

arXiv 2607.29338·low signalXBlueskyLinkedInCopy link

The paper starts from a concrete complaint about AI-assisted coding tools like Copilot, Cursor, and Claude: they generate web applications fast, raising concerns about complexity, longevity, and long-term maintainability, with backend-frontend heterogeneity a key source of duplicated logic and fragmented state. Hypermedia-driven approaches such as HTMX, Turbo Hotwire, and Datastar shift state to the server but still add custom attributes and residual JavaScript in computed expressions. The authors extend the HtmlFlow Kotlin DSL with typed Datastar data-* attributes and statically typed signal bindings, demonstrated via a reactive interaction pattern catalog and a Petclinic Spring MVC case study, reporting near-elimination of JavaScript with a homogeneous programming model.