3 ms·

What you are missing is that the pitch is well-done and the audience seems to mostly ignore the web-native (or lighter alternatives than a full react framework

What you are missing is that the pitch is well-done and the audience seems to mostly ignore the web-native (or lighter alternatives than a full react framework approach). HTMX is a wrapper around old functionality pitched to devs that learned that frontend "really, really needs" all the complexity. It's being used by people who never needed all that complexity for tasks that didn't need a whole frontend stack. Of course it fits them better than the alternative that they have heard about being the only modern way to build apps (a massive frontend stack where the framework isn't even a framework anymore so we built another framework around it). The thing that htmx users often miss is that you can have most of those nice things without pulling in htmx, htmx is definitely not right for most use-cases, htmx itself is quite the large JS dependency (and you still need to write JS to use it properly), it's not "just hypermedia", and on and on. Personally I think the solution-space that HTMX fits in is extremely narrow between normal HTML/CSS/JS and "fuller" frontend apps (hopefully built on lighter stacks than the current react meta).

alethiophile 2y ago
Personally, I would say that if you are doing DOM updates via AJAX calls that return HTML, HTMX is just the correct way to do it. (Unless you're using some other solution already for other reasons and it also includes that functionality.) Sure, you could do the basics of that workflow with twenty lines of your own JS, and save a dependency. But that's the kind of thing that is generally very unscalable, because unless you're very disciplined it quickly becomes a mass of spaghetti. The virtue of HTMX is more in how it channels and limits your code, than in the new capabilities it grants you (which were all in common use as of 2005 or whatever).
listenallyall 2y ago
> htmx is definitely not right for most use-cases, > the solution-space that HTMX fits in is extremely narrow Strong disagree. HTMX is extremely flexible, surprisingly powerful and fully capable of driving quite a wide range of web applications. HTMX + Alpine even moreso, while still being far less complicated than one of the big 3 frameworks.
- SahAssar 2y ago
  I'm guessing you are comparing HTMX to either pure HTML/CSS or a full react-framework-with-7986-packages solution? There are many other smaller frameworks, and many of them fit other parts of the spectrum than those other two extremes.
  - listenallyall 2y ago
    > big 3 frameworks React, Angular, Vue The existence of "many other smaller frameworks" is nice because it provides additional options for developers, but does not diminish HTMX's utility or suitability to drive a web application.
    - SahAssar 2y ago
      It does however diminish it's pitch as the alternative to big frameworks. My point is that there are many more points of choice than a "big framework", "htmx" or "pure html/js/css". HTMX isn't even the biggest one outside of what you called the "big 3".
      - listenallyall 2y ago
        Of course it isn't. Since when is "big" a selling point? I want something focused and functional, not big.
        SahAssar 2y ago
        Big in that they are popular, not big in the filesize/LOC sense (although those three seem to be both).

alethiophile 2y ago

Personally, I would say that if you are doing DOM updates via AJAX calls that return HTML, HTMX is just the correct way to do it. (Unless you're using some other solution already for other reasons and it also includes that functionality.) Sure, you could do the basics of that workflow with twenty lines of your own JS, and save a dependency. But that's the kind of thing that is generally very unscalable, because unless you're very disciplined it quickly becomes a mass of spaghetti. The virtue of HTMX is more in how it channels and limits your code, than in the new capabilities it grants you (which were all in common use as of 2005 or whatever).

listenallyall 2y ago

> htmx is definitely not right for most use-cases, > the solution-space that HTMX fits in is extremely narrow Strong disagree. HTMX is extremely flexible, surprisingly powerful and fully capable of driving quite a wide range of web applications. HTMX + Alpine even moreso, while still being far less complicated than one of the big 3 frameworks.

SahAssar 2y ago
I'm guessing you are comparing HTMX to either pure HTML/CSS or a full react-framework-with-7986-packages solution? There are many other smaller frameworks, and many of them fit other parts of the spectrum than those other two extremes.
- listenallyall 2y ago
  > big 3 frameworks React, Angular, Vue The existence of "many other smaller frameworks" is nice because it provides additional options for developers, but does not diminish HTMX's utility or suitability to drive a web application.
  - SahAssar 2y ago
    It does however diminish it's pitch as the alternative to big frameworks. My point is that there are many more points of choice than a "big framework", "htmx" or "pure html/js/css". HTMX isn't even the biggest one outside of what you called the "big 3".
    - listenallyall 2y ago
      Of course it isn't. Since when is "big" a selling point? I want something focused and functional, not big.
      - SahAssar 2y ago
        Big in that they are popular, not big in the filesize/LOC sense (although those three seem to be both).