I wouldn't describe LiveView as simple, necessarily. It makes for a great demo, but in my experience it complicates simple things in lots of subtle—and occasionally pernicious—ways.
Whilst you can use Phoenix without LiveView, this is becoming increasingly difficult as the Phoenix developers have clearly decided that LiveView is The Way.
Shameless self-plug: if you’re struggling to learn Phoenix maybe I can help?
I never mentioned LiveView in my comment, just Phoenix (you can use Phoenix without LiveView). But, in defense of LiveView, I use it in production - however, you will need something to compliment it for sure - I use Svelte 5, which is great. LV has a learning curve, but it makes development so much better once you get the hang of it, tbh. May need some 2-3 projects to get used to it. My $0.02.
+1 from me. I already spend more time learning phoenix in my free time than I'd like to admit and I'm stil waiting for the moment it makes 'click'.
It's just so hard sometimes to wrap your head around the abstractions, even though they are shallow + things are changing fast. I feel like my django-ish mental modal of web applications is also getting in the way a lot.
It would probably help, if I could spend more time with less interruptions on it. But I have to say that I expected to get into it a lot quicker since it's praised so much for it's dev experience.