I guess deprecation of Nashorn in Java will have some impact on Enonic XP as Enonic XP is heavily depended on Nashorn.
What is your position at Enonic on this development?
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My thinking goes in the direction that you should just drop the js layer all together. Many ppl might choose to render pages in a different rendering engine altogether like Fortran or Cobol (I’m joking). Why? Well as Nashorn stands, the engine can’t cope with the development in the node/ts community, so for practical and future purposes it should be deprecated also for xp projects.
We could do with the api which perhaps needs some additions. The endpoints for the api could go straight into your java engine instead of going via Nashorn or GraalVM. I’m implementing a platform based on Angular Universal, but it could just as well be React Native or Vue, so there will be no Thymeleaf templates on this project I expect.
Moving the rendering engine outside xp should save you some time getting ajour with the development in the rest of the world. Keeping the rendering engine inside the cms seems just completly wrong these days. Thymeleaf must die, it is just a strange tech these days. The rendering engine must be outside of xp, and I hope you agree 
What we need is a renderless cms.
Keeping app engine inside XP is crucial for people to be able to build custom endpoints, or serving good ol server-side rendered things. XP is way more than just a CMS. However XP is perfectly suited for use as a Headless CMS (when looking to do rendering outside of XP). Check out our Headless Starter kit which features a powerful GraphQL API: https://market.enonic.com/vendors/enonic/headless-cms-starter
BTW: GraalVM actually supports NodeJS too…
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I get your point, but you are loosing some important issues. The Thymeleaf rendering engine will probably be standing still while the other rendering engines will be moving full steam ahead. Nashorn might be deprecated shortly.
If you want to stay afloat as a business you need to stay competitive, which means you need to change your business strategy altogether.
You need to modify your app engine so we can easily do Angular Universal, React native or Vue. As of now it seems you are locking developers into templates written in Thymeleaf, which really is a really bad business decision. You need a strategy which can develop into the future.
Well I got this paid for lab project, and perhaps we can cooperate a bit regarding this. My goal would be to provide a clear and documented strategy for how to apply server side rendering engines different from Thymeleaf.
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I have no idea who said you have to use Thymeleaf? Templating engines are already pluggable. Have a look at how the Freemarker library is built: https://market.enonic.com/vendors/tineikt/freemarker-xp-library
With XP 7.0 we will also support Ecmascript 6, and you will be free to use any templating engine you like within XP. With XP 7 all templating engines are actually removed from the XP core and provided as libraries (similar to Freemarker). Also, we already have customers using XP in Headless mode, where the client is completely handled with NodeJS and other tools. The benefit of writing server-logic in Enonic is simply fewer moving parts…
Also we are really keen to deliver server-side component for the mentioned front-end frameworks, Any help on this is highly welcome!
You said it implicitly.
Deveopers are moving to Typescript, so ES6 is already old. Precisely the reason you need to move rendering outside the cms. U don’t cope with developments.
“The benefit of writing server-logic in Enonic is simply fewer moving parts”
This is just a statement with no logic behind it and I disagree. Writing server logic in anything else than Enonic is what you want. Writing server logic in Enonic is not advisable.
Someone need to do this and your business really depends on it. So I really hope I get this develoment right.
We believe XP is well suited for modern application development. We are more than happy to get your input on this matter, and share our plans with you. Nice if you can drop by the office early next week?
Sure I’ll be happy to drop by on tuesday my day is mostly open
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