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My comment from the other thread: The CEO of gumroad mentioned on twitter that he had tried out htmx for a project but decided to go with NextJS instead. I ask

My comment from the other thread: The CEO of gumroad mentioned on twitter that he had tried out htmx for a project but decided to go with NextJS instead. I asked him if he was willing to write up his experience and he graciously agreed to do so. I have been looking for a thoughtful negative experience with htmx to host on the htmx website and I am very thankful he was willing to put in the work to produce one.

kunley 2y ago
Very useful explanation, because at first it seemed unusual to see it on htmx.org, but well, different projects have different needs.
- ensignavenger 2y ago
  HTMX has posted links to negative articles before, but I am not aware of any as thoughtful as this one. So it wasn't all that surprising for me that they would share this. That they went out of their way to solicit it is extraordinary, though!
hencq 2y ago
Your attitude to call out where htmx might not be the best solution, makes me respect the project even more. It's refreshing to see this compared to lots of other projects that always seem to claim to be the best solution for everything. I'm curious in particular about the call out around drag-and-drop. Is that something you agree with? Is drag and drop difficult with htmx and if so, is that something you plan on tackling?
- recursivedoubts 2y ago
  There is an htmx demo on drag-and-drop (in the reorder sense) using Sortable.js here: https://htmx.org/examples/sortable/ https://htmx.org/examples/sortable/ Like most of the examples on the htmx site it is pretty bare bones (we keep it that way to focus on the concepts) but it's a reasonable demonstration of the integration. Whether that is good enough of course depends on your use case If you want an integrated and polished ecosystem that's something htmx isn't going to provide: it's a library focused (mainly) on one thing: generalizing hypermedia controls. So, when you want client side functionality like this, you are going to have to glue things together a bit. I completely understand the desire of having an integrated ecosystem to avoid doing that.
  - hencq 2y ago
    Thanks! That actually seems very smooth. Trying out htmx has been high on my list for a while when I finally get time to do a little personal side project. Real life keeps getting in the way, but this is a good nudge. The appealing thing about htmx to me is that it seems like it should be very easy to keep everything in your head.
  - mthoms 2y ago
    Does it support nesting?
    - recursivedoubts 2y ago
      here htmx is integrating with Sortable.js for drag and drop functionality via events, so whatever Sortable can do, htmx can respond to: http://sortablejs.github.io/Sortable/ http://sortablejs.github.io/Sortable/
      - mthoms 2y ago
        I'm kinda familiar with Sortable, but haven't looked at it in the past several years. I'll have a look again, thanks!
  - spirobelv2 2y ago
    after having used both: sortablejs is better than reactdnd. that being said: htmx makes it too hard to quickly add a fat frontend to a page when necessary. The points about the react ecosystem are very valid, even if drag and drop is an exception. The network effects of react and others are hard to beat. Its probably even more npm as a whole than just react. wrote myself a framework with bun that solves this for me: https://github.com/spirobel/mininext https://github.com/spirobel/mininext still get the pure html+css feeling like with htmx, but can throw in a big frontend when needed. https://x.com/spirobel/status/1827231794934247674?t=moRzsWIPysnOcc6LeIYlQQ&s=19 https://x.com/spirobel/status/1827231794934247674?t=moRzsWIP...
- DevX101 2y ago
  I've never seen a project highlight a negative use case in detail. This is a first.
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    It's not quite the same but SQLite has a page where they clearly present its limitations and how to identify the situations where you should choose something else. https://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html https://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html
    - recursivedoubts 2y ago
      We have a similar essay up on when to use htmx/hypermedia: https://htmx.org/essays/when-to-use-hypermedia/ https://htmx.org/essays/when-to-use-hypermedia/ I think it's a good idea for any software project to have something like this so that people know when it's a good fit and when it isn't.
      - abrookewood 2y ago
        Have to agree - it's certainly refreshing to see someone acknowledging that their technology isn't going to work best in every case.
      - giraffe_lady 2y ago
        Ah cool! I've used htmx and like it but I hadn't seen this before.
  - dannyobrien 2y ago
    Me neither. In the 2000s, Tor did something similar (a "what Tor can't do" page) and prominent linked to it on the front page, which definitely improved the project's reputation with a coterie of infosec professionals. It might not have helped with wider adoption though. People would send me the link saying "Look at all of these bad things about Tor", and it would be links to Tor explanatory pages. It was around that time that I realised that when trying to give people an intuition for what software many Internet professionals trust, the list of "green flags" I identified was, in fact, the exact opposite of what the majority might guess as being good signs. "Large list of attractive sounding features" vs "Lists problems with the tool as prominently as benefits" ; "Sold and marketed by a large well-known company" vs "Developed by a small, volunteer team" ; "Free to download" vs "Costs money"; "Modern, professionally-designed website" vs "Looks like it was built in 1997", etc, etc.
- x0x0 2y ago
  I've used hotwire a bunch, and with minor differences, I think the list of things that htmx is not good for is spot on. I don't think I'm explaining this well, but maybe this will help someone: Hotwire / htmx are about server-side rendering and making that work more smoothly with the client. eg fewer page navigations, more rapid update of the client, etc. But it's still, through and through, server render with server state. It works well as long as the server is always the source of truth. The things that it isn't good at, such as drag and drop or complex, multi-state forms on the client side, are basically because you temporarily have a split source of truth: the client is the source of truth with complex state. That said, my strong suggestion would be to use Hotwire or htmx for 95% of your project even if the main interaction loop is done in react. Your app will still likely have tons of crud around user management, settings / config, onboarding, etc. You can make all that work more nicely. edit: in case it wasn't clear: for the things that are in the hotwire/htmx wheelhouse, the tech works really well. It's a fantastic improvement.
  - rikthevik 2y ago
    > 95% of your project even if the main interaction loop is done in react The trick is to be very honest with yourself (and team) about how much complex front-end UI the application actually _requires_. Using React where it isn't necessary is very expensive in the long run. The older I get, the more the grug brained developer makes sense.
    - Aeolun 2y ago
      The more I work with React, the more I realize I just don’t have the motivation to learn and keep up with more than one way of doing front-end. Using it everywhere is working out pretty well for me. Sometimes it’s not the best choice for the app I’m working on, but it’s always thr best choice for me.
- Freedom2 2y ago
  Agreed. Too often you'll see HN's claim that PHP / Java / MySQL are the best choices for everything, where often times they are blind to specific problems and use-cases that other developers are trying to solve.
  - ksec 2y ago
    >Too often you'll see HN's claim that PHP / Java / MySQL are the best choices for everything. Either this is missing /s or this is trolling, right?
    - freedomben 2y ago
      Indeed. Even if hn were a monolith and all had the same opinion, it certainly would not be a pro PHP, Java and MySQL position.
- BestHackerOnHN 2y ago
  > It's refreshing to see this compared to lots of other projects that always seem to claim to be the best solution for everything. Agreed 100%, hencq!
  - porridgeraisin 2y ago
    Your effort did not go unnoticed :-)
laserlight 2y ago
> other thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41727315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41727315
dakiol 2y ago
Is it just me or the article smells like AI-generated?
- wild_egg 2y ago
  You can see the evolution of the article in the PR on GitHub. Seems genuine.
  - dakiol 2y ago
    Good one. Missed it.
- rmbyrro 2y ago
  Your AI smell sensors need more training data to reduce hallucinations.
  - deciduously 2y ago
    It's a safe comment for people, generally, to call out any snippet of text as AI. If they're right, they get to feel smug about being right, and if they're wrong, they get to feel smug about telling someone their thing was bad and they should feel bad. I'm no fan of AI slop either, but calling out text for which you have no way to determine the provenance as auto-generated is, in my opinion, also "slop".
tuyiown 2y ago
This is a great initiative. Too much people with little experience with non trivial web are vocal about htmx, and it's not a good thing for the projet.
n3storm 2y ago
thank you so much, I am a user since intercooler.
- recursivedoubts 2y ago
  based, thank you
ksec 2y ago
>The CEO of gumroad mentioned on twitter... He also mentioned Rails in itself is a technical debt. And when asked about it all he said was React is so much better. As if you cant use React with Rails. As for the article, I dont see it as a negative experience for HTMX. As soon as he mentions drag and drop, real time collaboration, I will go on to say may be even toying with HTMX was wrong in the first place? I am also not sure what the screenshot was trying to show. But all of that, I think it is a great pieces to be on HTMX website.
- nine_k 2y ago
  I would say React is (so much) better because it's functional, immutable, one-way, almost declarative. In comparison, stuff like ActiveRecord is very imperative, shared-mutable-state thing. For React-based code you usually take a language with a rich static type system (TS); Rails with its design-by-contract struggled to provide type signatures, last time I checked. One of them is much easier to reason about than the other, even though the other is enviably compact.
  - freedomben 2y ago
    React is a client-side library. Rails is a server-side framework. I don't see how you can even really compare these apples and oranges. Personally, I think rails and react go together very well. For apps that need rich client-side functionality, I will do a react spa with a back end in elixir/ Phoenix (which is very similar to rails). For apps that don't, just doing server-side rendering is plenty sufficient and is my preference.
    - nine_k 2y ago
      I'm only comparing development experience and, so to say, the conceptual environment. Verily, Rails can be a pretty good and compact way to serve backend APIs for a React-based frontend. But the API boundary is the "narrow waist", its relative neutrality allows to switch backend and frontend implementations easily, or even to mix them. I've seen a React frontend seamlessly consuming APIs served by Python and Rust services, and it's hardly possible to spot which endpoint is served by what in the frontend code. Unlike on the frontend, FP approaches on the backend are not (as) widespread. Established imperative frameworks (Django, Rails, Spring Boot, etc) are still the huge majority.
pseudosavant 2y ago
Much respect for showing where htmx might not be as suitable as other tools. In my mind htmx is more a replacement for jQuery than React. htmx and jQuery both augment documents with interaction. React tries to be the entire document. Different tools for different jobs.
- gloosx 2y ago
  htmx is really just html on steroids, it's not a replacement for any JS library
d13 2y ago
Thank you! The linked article, in addition to this, https://htmx.org/essays/htmx-sucks/ https://htmx.org/essays/htmx-sucks/ Has convinced me never to use or recommend htmx to anyone.
- recursivedoubts 2y ago
  get the mug! https://swag.htmx.org/products/htmx-sucks-mug https://swag.htmx.org/products/htmx-sucks-mug
  - d13 2y ago
    Awesome, thanks!!
tomcam 2y ago
> I have been looking for a thoughtful negative experience with htmx to host on the htmx website Mad props, my man. I love that attitude. To me it's making the world a better place in a tangible way.

kunley 2y ago

Very useful explanation, because at first it seemed unusual to see it on htmx.org, but well, different projects have different needs.

ensignavenger 2y ago
HTMX has posted links to negative articles before, but I am not aware of any as thoughtful as this one. So it wasn't all that surprising for me that they would share this. That they went out of their way to solicit it is extraordinary, though!

hencq 2y ago

Your attitude to call out where htmx might not be the best solution, makes me respect the project even more. It's refreshing to see this compared to lots of other projects that always seem to claim to be the best solution for everything. I'm curious in particular about the call out around drag-and-drop. Is that something you agree with? Is drag and drop difficult with htmx and if so, is that something you plan on tackling?

recursivedoubts 2y ago
There is an htmx demo on drag-and-drop (in the reorder sense) using Sortable.js here: https://htmx.org/examples/sortable/ https://htmx.org/examples/sortable/ Like most of the examples on the htmx site it is pretty bare bones (we keep it that way to focus on the concepts) but it's a reasonable demonstration of the integration. Whether that is good enough of course depends on your use case If you want an integrated and polished ecosystem that's something htmx isn't going to provide: it's a library focused (mainly) on one thing: generalizing hypermedia controls. So, when you want client side functionality like this, you are going to have to glue things together a bit. I completely understand the desire of having an integrated ecosystem to avoid doing that.
- hencq 2y ago
  Thanks! That actually seems very smooth. Trying out htmx has been high on my list for a while when I finally get time to do a little personal side project. Real life keeps getting in the way, but this is a good nudge. The appealing thing about htmx to me is that it seems like it should be very easy to keep everything in your head.
- mthoms 2y ago
  Does it support nesting?
  - recursivedoubts 2y ago
    here htmx is integrating with Sortable.js for drag and drop functionality via events, so whatever Sortable can do, htmx can respond to: http://sortablejs.github.io/Sortable/ http://sortablejs.github.io/Sortable/
    - mthoms 2y ago
      I'm kinda familiar with Sortable, but haven't looked at it in the past several years. I'll have a look again, thanks!
- spirobelv2 2y ago
  after having used both: sortablejs is better than reactdnd. that being said: htmx makes it too hard to quickly add a fat frontend to a page when necessary. The points about the react ecosystem are very valid, even if drag and drop is an exception. The network effects of react and others are hard to beat. Its probably even more npm as a whole than just react. wrote myself a framework with bun that solves this for me: https://github.com/spirobel/mininext https://github.com/spirobel/mininext still get the pure html+css feeling like with htmx, but can throw in a big frontend when needed. https://x.com/spirobel/status/1827231794934247674?t=moRzsWIPysnOcc6LeIYlQQ&s=19 https://x.com/spirobel/status/1827231794934247674?t=moRzsWIP...
DevX101 2y ago
I've never seen a project highlight a negative use case in detail. This is a first.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  It's not quite the same but SQLite has a page where they clearly present its limitations and how to identify the situations where you should choose something else. https://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html https://www.sqlite.org/whentouse.html
  - recursivedoubts 2y ago
    We have a similar essay up on when to use htmx/hypermedia: https://htmx.org/essays/when-to-use-hypermedia/ https://htmx.org/essays/when-to-use-hypermedia/ I think it's a good idea for any software project to have something like this so that people know when it's a good fit and when it isn't.
    - abrookewood 2y ago
      Have to agree - it's certainly refreshing to see someone acknowledging that their technology isn't going to work best in every case.
    - giraffe_lady 2y ago
      Ah cool! I've used htmx and like it but I hadn't seen this before.
- dannyobrien 2y ago
  Me neither. In the 2000s, Tor did something similar (a "what Tor can't do" page) and prominent linked to it on the front page, which definitely improved the project's reputation with a coterie of infosec professionals. It might not have helped with wider adoption though. People would send me the link saying "Look at all of these bad things about Tor", and it would be links to Tor explanatory pages. It was around that time that I realised that when trying to give people an intuition for what software many Internet professionals trust, the list of "green flags" I identified was, in fact, the exact opposite of what the majority might guess as being good signs. "Large list of attractive sounding features" vs "Lists problems with the tool as prominently as benefits" ; "Sold and marketed by a large well-known company" vs "Developed by a small, volunteer team" ; "Free to download" vs "Costs money"; "Modern, professionally-designed website" vs "Looks like it was built in 1997", etc, etc.
x0x0 2y ago
I've used hotwire a bunch, and with minor differences, I think the list of things that htmx is not good for is spot on. I don't think I'm explaining this well, but maybe this will help someone: Hotwire / htmx are about server-side rendering and making that work more smoothly with the client. eg fewer page navigations, more rapid update of the client, etc. But it's still, through and through, server render with server state. It works well as long as the server is always the source of truth. The things that it isn't good at, such as drag and drop or complex, multi-state forms on the client side, are basically because you temporarily have a split source of truth: the client is the source of truth with complex state. That said, my strong suggestion would be to use Hotwire or htmx for 95% of your project even if the main interaction loop is done in react. Your app will still likely have tons of crud around user management, settings / config, onboarding, etc. You can make all that work more nicely. edit: in case it wasn't clear: for the things that are in the hotwire/htmx wheelhouse, the tech works really well. It's a fantastic improvement.
- rikthevik 2y ago
  > 95% of your project even if the main interaction loop is done in react The trick is to be very honest with yourself (and team) about how much complex front-end UI the application actually _requires_. Using React where it isn't necessary is very expensive in the long run. The older I get, the more the grug brained developer makes sense.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    The more I work with React, the more I realize I just don’t have the motivation to learn and keep up with more than one way of doing front-end. Using it everywhere is working out pretty well for me. Sometimes it’s not the best choice for the app I’m working on, but it’s always thr best choice for me.
Freedom2 2y ago
Agreed. Too often you'll see HN's claim that PHP / Java / MySQL are the best choices for everything, where often times they are blind to specific problems and use-cases that other developers are trying to solve.
- ksec 2y ago
  >Too often you'll see HN's claim that PHP / Java / MySQL are the best choices for everything. Either this is missing /s or this is trolling, right?
  - freedomben 2y ago
    Indeed. Even if hn were a monolith and all had the same opinion, it certainly would not be a pro PHP, Java and MySQL position.
BestHackerOnHN 2y ago
> It's refreshing to see this compared to lots of other projects that always seem to claim to be the best solution for everything. Agreed 100%, hencq!
- porridgeraisin 2y ago
  Your effort did not go unnoticed :-)

laserlight 2y ago

> other thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41727315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41727315

dakiol 2y ago

Is it just me or the article smells like AI-generated?

wild_egg 2y ago
You can see the evolution of the article in the PR on GitHub. Seems genuine.
- dakiol 2y ago
  Good one. Missed it.
rmbyrro 2y ago
Your AI smell sensors need more training data to reduce hallucinations.
- deciduously 2y ago
  It's a safe comment for people, generally, to call out any snippet of text as AI. If they're right, they get to feel smug about being right, and if they're wrong, they get to feel smug about telling someone their thing was bad and they should feel bad. I'm no fan of AI slop either, but calling out text for which you have no way to determine the provenance as auto-generated is, in my opinion, also "slop".

tuyiown 2y ago

This is a great initiative. Too much people with little experience with non trivial web are vocal about htmx, and it's not a good thing for the projet.

n3storm 2y ago

thank you so much, I am a user since intercooler.

recursivedoubts 2y ago
based, thank you

ksec 2y ago

>The CEO of gumroad mentioned on twitter... He also mentioned Rails in itself is a technical debt. And when asked about it all he said was React is so much better. As if you cant use React with Rails. As for the article, I dont see it as a negative experience for HTMX. As soon as he mentions drag and drop, real time collaboration, I will go on to say may be even toying with HTMX was wrong in the first place? I am also not sure what the screenshot was trying to show. But all of that, I think it is a great pieces to be on HTMX website.

nine_k 2y ago
I would say React is (so much) better because it's functional, immutable, one-way, almost declarative. In comparison, stuff like ActiveRecord is very imperative, shared-mutable-state thing. For React-based code you usually take a language with a rich static type system (TS); Rails with its design-by-contract struggled to provide type signatures, last time I checked. One of them is much easier to reason about than the other, even though the other is enviably compact.
- freedomben 2y ago
  React is a client-side library. Rails is a server-side framework. I don't see how you can even really compare these apples and oranges. Personally, I think rails and react go together very well. For apps that need rich client-side functionality, I will do a react spa with a back end in elixir/ Phoenix (which is very similar to rails). For apps that don't, just doing server-side rendering is plenty sufficient and is my preference.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    I'm only comparing development experience and, so to say, the conceptual environment. Verily, Rails can be a pretty good and compact way to serve backend APIs for a React-based frontend. But the API boundary is the "narrow waist", its relative neutrality allows to switch backend and frontend implementations easily, or even to mix them. I've seen a React frontend seamlessly consuming APIs served by Python and Rust services, and it's hardly possible to spot which endpoint is served by what in the frontend code. Unlike on the frontend, FP approaches on the backend are not (as) widespread. Established imperative frameworks (Django, Rails, Spring Boot, etc) are still the huge majority.

pseudosavant 2y ago

Much respect for showing where htmx might not be as suitable as other tools. In my mind htmx is more a replacement for jQuery than React. htmx and jQuery both augment documents with interaction. React tries to be the entire document. Different tools for different jobs.

gloosx 2y ago
htmx is really just html on steroids, it's not a replacement for any JS library

d13 2y ago

Thank you! The linked article, in addition to this, https://htmx.org/essays/htmx-sucks/ https://htmx.org/essays/htmx-sucks/ Has convinced me never to use or recommend htmx to anyone.

recursivedoubts 2y ago
get the mug! https://swag.htmx.org/products/htmx-sucks-mug https://swag.htmx.org/products/htmx-sucks-mug
- d13 2y ago
  Awesome, thanks!!

tomcam 2y ago

> I have been looking for a thoughtful negative experience with htmx to host on the htmx website Mad props, my man. I love that attitude. To me it's making the world a better place in a tangible way.