Why would it be moot? I do something similar to this technique with haml-js and underscore templates (though i wear a full beard, i'm not really into mustache.js)

This lets me use the same views on the server and the client, with the same $templates.render("item", context); where "item.html.haml" is the name of the source file. I pre-compile the source of all the .haml files to functions and add them to the $templates object (boo, globals, yadda yadda yadda) and then write this out to a file for serving to the browser (./public/templates.js by default.)

Then, when I make a json call or whatever and need to re-render a partial, i just call the same template rendering.

Note that this works for Node.js but you could easily make it work with ruby through redcar or use a similar technique for precompiling your mustache templates for the browser while still using your language-native implementation on the server.

Edit: forgot the link https://github.com/aaronblohowiak/shared-views

> Why would it be moot?

Because the server generates the javascript template methods. Thus the browser does not need to parse the mustache templates. It only needs to call the compiled functions. This means the browser would not need to have an implementation of mustache running on it, since the template building is contained within the compiled javascript functions.

Ah, ok. I thought you meant that using the mustache template on the client side would be moot, not that having a mustache compiler on the client side would be moot. It was a little confusing because I'd still say that you are "using the mustache template" on the client side even though you are actually just running the precompiled function derived from that template.