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I feel like a lot of the arguments for HTMX are simply delight in having "permission" to build MPAs again. Backend stacks are historically good at routing/state

I feel like a lot of the arguments for HTMX are simply delight in having "permission" to build MPAs again. Backend stacks are historically good at routing/state management/auth and more, everything old is new again. But also, yes, not everything needs to be a SPA and maybe we've just reached the point to start asking again "why is this a SPA?" > JSX is a really elegant way to avoid templating JSX is still a templating language. It's just an "inverted one" where the templates are embedded in scripts rather than the other way around. That said, I do think it is a very elegant templating system, especially because it can be type checked with Typescript. TSX is a massive improvement on most template compilers in part because it has such a massive types ecosystem today. (My own efforts in "post-React"/"post-Angular" have been TSX-based. I've got a Knockout-inspired view engine with a single runtime dependency on RxJS. It has a developer experience similar to React, but isn't a virtual DOM, and has some some interesting tricks up its sleeve. I'm really happy with TSX as the template language for it.)

causal 2y ago
Agreed. I also think React did the world a favor by making functional programming a little more mainstream, which is part of what makes JSX/TSX feel so magical when it works.
jakubmazanec 2y ago
> JSX is still a templating language No, it isn't a templating language, it's still just JavaScript - calls to createElement or _jsx or other function with some syntactic sugar to make it look like HTML.
- svachalek 2y ago
  > with some syntactic sugar isn't that what a templating language is?
  - jakubmazanec 2y ago
    No. Do you seriously don't understand the difference between JSX, a simple syntax extension that compiles to JavaScript function calls, and a templating language, for example Vue's templating syntax [1] or EJS [2] ? [1] https://vuejs.org/guide/essentials/template-syntax https://vuejs.org/guide/essentials/template-syntax [2] https://ejs.co/ https://ejs.co/
    - lolinder 2y ago
      Rather than acting like OP is stupid for not seeing the difference, why don't you enlighten us? From where I'm sitting it looks like maybe you're describing a difference in complexity levels? Vue compiles to a representation that is less obviously related to the template? Or what? I, like OP, am genuinely unsure what distinction you're drawing. It seems like you might just feel that templates are icky and jsx isn't icky.
      - jakubmazanec 2y ago
        It's trivial. JSX is just syntactic sugar for JavaScript, and templating languages aren't that. They also aren't just syntactic sugar. It's literally apples and oranges. I ask again, what is difficult to understand about this? Or do you think it's not true?
        WorldMaker 2y ago
        You may have stricter internal boundaries of what constitutes a "language" than many of us do. Languages are a spectrum and I find there are few hard boundaries in practice. Depending on how you define "syntactic sugar" (and I believe it is a much harder thing to define than you may expect) every language is just "syntactic sugar" for some form of machine code. JSX is a language that takes XML-influenced templates embedded in JS files and compiles that to JS files. EJS is a template language that can embed JS snippets and compiles that to JS files (or interprets it at runtime, though the distinction between compilers and interpreters I think is largely irrelevant here). They both have the same general target compiled language, and they both have similar transformations from an original document to a new process. The biggest difference I mentioned is an "inversion" of what people think of as a template language (the template being the "focus" and scripting it being secondary/embedded), but I don't think that disqualifies it as a template language. Subjective feelings of "syntax sugar" or not, JSX is a language intended to write templates in. That's a "template language" by tautology, if not also by definition.
qudat 2y ago
Agreed. When you just need a tiny bit of interactivity I can see the value in htmx. However, leveraging html as a dsl is bound to be limiting
- recursivedoubts 2y ago
  here's an example of a fairly interactive site that switched to htmx with significant savings: https://htmx.org/essays/a-real-world-react-to-htmx-port/ https://htmx.org/essays/a-real-world-react-to-htmx-port/ htmx triggers and responds to events, which can be used to integrate it into more interactive experiences, e.g. https://htmx.org/examples/sortable/ https://htmx.org/examples/sortable/

causal 2y ago

Agreed. I also think React did the world a favor by making functional programming a little more mainstream, which is part of what makes JSX/TSX feel so magical when it works.

jakubmazanec 2y ago

> JSX is still a templating language No, it isn't a templating language, it's still just JavaScript - calls to createElement or _jsx or other function with some syntactic sugar to make it look like HTML.

svachalek 2y ago
> with some syntactic sugar isn't that what a templating language is?
- jakubmazanec 2y ago
  No. Do you seriously don't understand the difference between JSX, a simple syntax extension that compiles to JavaScript function calls, and a templating language, for example Vue's templating syntax [1] or EJS [2] ? [1] https://vuejs.org/guide/essentials/template-syntax https://vuejs.org/guide/essentials/template-syntax [2] https://ejs.co/ https://ejs.co/
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Rather than acting like OP is stupid for not seeing the difference, why don't you enlighten us? From where I'm sitting it looks like maybe you're describing a difference in complexity levels? Vue compiles to a representation that is less obviously related to the template? Or what? I, like OP, am genuinely unsure what distinction you're drawing. It seems like you might just feel that templates are icky and jsx isn't icky.
    - jakubmazanec 2y ago
      It's trivial. JSX is just syntactic sugar for JavaScript, and templating languages aren't that. They also aren't just syntactic sugar. It's literally apples and oranges. I ask again, what is difficult to understand about this? Or do you think it's not true?
      - WorldMaker 2y ago
        You may have stricter internal boundaries of what constitutes a "language" than many of us do. Languages are a spectrum and I find there are few hard boundaries in practice. Depending on how you define "syntactic sugar" (and I believe it is a much harder thing to define than you may expect) every language is just "syntactic sugar" for some form of machine code. JSX is a language that takes XML-influenced templates embedded in JS files and compiles that to JS files. EJS is a template language that can embed JS snippets and compiles that to JS files (or interprets it at runtime, though the distinction between compilers and interpreters I think is largely irrelevant here). They both have the same general target compiled language, and they both have similar transformations from an original document to a new process. The biggest difference I mentioned is an "inversion" of what people think of as a template language (the template being the "focus" and scripting it being secondary/embedded), but I don't think that disqualifies it as a template language. Subjective feelings of "syntax sugar" or not, JSX is a language intended to write templates in. That's a "template language" by tautology, if not also by definition.

qudat 2y ago

Agreed. When you just need a tiny bit of interactivity I can see the value in htmx. However, leveraging html as a dsl is bound to be limiting

recursivedoubts 2y ago
here's an example of a fairly interactive site that switched to htmx with significant savings: https://htmx.org/essays/a-real-world-react-to-htmx-port/ https://htmx.org/essays/a-real-world-react-to-htmx-port/ htmx triggers and responds to events, which can be used to integrate it into more interactive experiences, e.g. https://htmx.org/examples/sortable/ https://htmx.org/examples/sortable/