5 ms·

I tried to get HTMX adopted for a new project but the unanimous response was "what is this? why not React? everyone knows React. period" and most of my argument

by kgeist 2y ago

I tried to get HTMX adopted for a new project but the unanimous response was "what is this? why not React? everyone knows React. period" and most of my arguments for HTMX were ignored, because to most people, HTMX looked like some obscure, yet another JS framework created last week, with questionable future.

frde_me 2y ago
To be fair, it's not an unfair response. Being able to hire for a technology, and having a large community around the tech stack you use has tangible value. HTMX might not be something that will vanish in a week, but it's also nowhere close to a mainstream framework.
wg0 2y ago
Very anti React person went for Svelte but the kind of modularity React offers, HTMX can't hope to match especially on larger projects. Modern React is too simple. A component is just a pure function taking arguments and returning UI as JSX. The only other thing you need to know is few hooks.
- The_Colonel 2y ago
  > Modern React is too simple. A component is just a pure function React is simple only in some mathematical theoretical sense, but not for understanding by human minds which fundamentally operate imperatively ("if I click on this, load data X from the server and show them to the user..."). You can get some hello world example relatively easily, but you hit the complexity wall quite quickly (need to know "some hooks" - some, like useEffect() are very complex, yet often needed for basic things). The worst of all is debugging with stacktraces making no sense with it all being from the React itself, not your code, not tracking some logical pathway. (I'm saying that as someone who generally likes React and would choose it for a new project)
  - wg0 2y ago
    useEffect is simple. If I recall correctly, with no arguments it is like onMount and with the dependent variables listed in array, it would be executed every time any of the listed variables change.
- brtkdotse 2y ago
  > The only other thing you need to know is few hooks. ...and then draw the rest of the owl.
- bvrmn 2y ago
  > The only other thing you need to know is few hooks. And where you can't use them. Hopefully there are zillions of YT videos from experts teaching you all react gotchas.
- cpill 2y ago
  try passing state around the component hierarchy and see how simple it is. HTMX makes it easy but centralising the state in one place ie the server. try coming back to your code base in a year or two and see how simple it seems then :D
  - wg0 2y ago
    You pull the state up. Props down.
  - robertoandred 2y ago
    Except when your state appears in many parts of the page, HTMX makes it hard to keep everything updated.
    - sethammons 2y ago
      agreed: htmx is good for "swap out this one element and its children". It is not good for "and these other related elements need to update"
      - yawaramin 2y ago
        To a certain extent, it works, but there's definitely a point of complexity that you can hit in the app at which it becomes painful. Those are the kinds of apps where htmx is just not a good fit.
      - wild_egg 2y ago
        > It is not good for "and these other related elements need to update" That seems a bit backwards, no? Why can't those other elements manage their own updates? You can have the server respond with an `HX-Trigger` header to dispatch an event and any elements that care about that event can listen for it. Far simpler than trying to coordinate surgical DOM updates in a single HTTP request. Events form the backbone of the browser environment and leaning into that model makes a lot of things much easier
    - xvinci 2y ago
      Fully ack. But this can actually be turned into something good imho: I try to challenge all layers (Analysis, UI / UX design) on simplicity: "Do we really need X parts of the page all be affected / updated by something? How could we design it differently with locality in mind? Can we simplify the state somehow?" -> I think that the resulting solutions are often simpler, cheaper, and work just as well.
- sethammons 2y ago
  maybe you can send me to the right tutorial. I'm a backend, distributed systems engineer. I have worked on eye-watering scale. React is anything but simple to me. I tried create-react-app, the thing built and downloaded for several minutes, and then there was a nest of file relationships that I didn't grok. It seemed like any change required three files to be updated. Lots of ancillary things like bundlers, packers, tree shakers, lions, tigers, and bears, oh my. After an hour, I didn't get what I was doing. Somehow, altering this function over here made this other thing over there go "moo." I used to do web development back in like 2001. I understand the web, http, css, html, and basic js. I'm not up on all the latest, but I have a very firm base. I got htmx working and pretty much fully digested in the same amount of time I wasted on React and have produced a working prototype. I find htmx to be like how the web used to be. It makes sense.
  - vitaflo 2y ago
    FWIW, create-react-app is overloaded with every package you could ever potentially want to use for some weird reason. It's way overkill and I wouldn't recommend using it. It's much better just to use Vite with React as a plugin. Then you only need to install three React packages to get your app going. The best tutorial I've used was "Road to React" by Robin Weiruch. His example app you learn is how to build a Hacker News front page. Very clear and it goes step by step. Most of the tutorials online are all over the place, or mix Class tutorials with Hooks tutorials, or starts adding in things like Redux (which aren't needed). The person you're responding to is correct, at it's core React is very simple, especially if you just stick to hooks. Most of my code is just bog standard HTML (as JSX), CSS and JS with a few React hooks thrown in. FWIW, I've been doing frontend dev since '94 and personally find React jives the most for me and how normal HTML/JS/CSS work. I can see why people would like HTMX, but I've never liked overloading HTML attributes as some strange event model. But it's good there are choices.
  - StressedDev 2y ago
    React has very good documentation and an excellent tutorial. Here is a link to it: https://react.dev/learn https://react.dev/learn . I recommend doing the exercises. They really help you learn React.
  - 2y ago
greenavocado 2y ago
The reason is because all new technology is a staffing and training problem management needs to solve. Someone has to maintain your thing after its built and be ready when you leave the organization. If React can solve the issue in a similar timeframe and level of effort and it is easy to source React developers then obviously your proposal will be rejected because React is simply far easier to deal with from a training and staffing perspective for what you are trying to do. You need more merits to warrant the introduction of new languages and frameworks.
recursivedoubts 2y ago
That's a fair response: https://htmx.org/essays/when-to-use-hypermedia/#if-your-team-is-not-on-board https://htmx.org/essays/when-to-use-hypermedia/#if-your-team... the reality is that the only way to prove htmx is around for the long term is to stick around for the long term, and I hope this essay contributes towards that. We'll see how this years JS rising stars shakes out.
on_the_train 2y ago
Same story here, although the poison of choice is angular.
n144q 2y ago
Of course you get pushbacks. Is there any *real* advantage, technical or otherwise, at an organization level, of adopting this new model of creating web pages, other than your personal preferences? You are moving away from an established system with tools that everyone is familiar with, to a system that much fewer people use, with no clear performance/maintenance/management benefit (at least not demonstrated). Maybe you don't like writing JS/TS, but plenty of other people do, and they don't need to cater to your preferences. People need to spend time learning this tool. They need to be proficient with it. Your new stack might need to still work with existing code at some point. That means training, overhead, ramp up and potential risk in a less established area. Why would people do that? You should be thankful you didn't get warnings from your boss for messing around instead of actually pushing features out.

by kgeist 2y ago

frde_me 2y ago

To be fair, it's not an unfair response. Being able to hire for a technology, and having a large community around the tech stack you use has tangible value. HTMX might not be something that will vanish in a week, but it's also nowhere close to a mainstream framework.

wg0 2y ago

Very anti React person went for Svelte but the kind of modularity React offers, HTMX can't hope to match especially on larger projects. Modern React is too simple. A component is just a pure function taking arguments and returning UI as JSX. The only other thing you need to know is few hooks.

The_Colonel 2y ago
> Modern React is too simple. A component is just a pure function React is simple only in some mathematical theoretical sense, but not for understanding by human minds which fundamentally operate imperatively ("if I click on this, load data X from the server and show them to the user..."). You can get some hello world example relatively easily, but you hit the complexity wall quite quickly (need to know "some hooks" - some, like useEffect() are very complex, yet often needed for basic things). The worst of all is debugging with stacktraces making no sense with it all being from the React itself, not your code, not tracking some logical pathway. (I'm saying that as someone who generally likes React and would choose it for a new project)
- wg0 2y ago
  useEffect is simple. If I recall correctly, with no arguments it is like onMount and with the dependent variables listed in array, it would be executed every time any of the listed variables change.
brtkdotse 2y ago
> The only other thing you need to know is few hooks. ...and then draw the rest of the owl.
bvrmn 2y ago
> The only other thing you need to know is few hooks. And where you can't use them. Hopefully there are zillions of YT videos from experts teaching you all react gotchas.
cpill 2y ago
try passing state around the component hierarchy and see how simple it is. HTMX makes it easy but centralising the state in one place ie the server. try coming back to your code base in a year or two and see how simple it seems then :D
- wg0 2y ago
  You pull the state up. Props down.
- robertoandred 2y ago
  Except when your state appears in many parts of the page, HTMX makes it hard to keep everything updated.
  - sethammons 2y ago
    agreed: htmx is good for "swap out this one element and its children". It is not good for "and these other related elements need to update"
    - yawaramin 2y ago
      To a certain extent, it works, but there's definitely a point of complexity that you can hit in the app at which it becomes painful. Those are the kinds of apps where htmx is just not a good fit.
    - wild_egg 2y ago
      > It is not good for "and these other related elements need to update" That seems a bit backwards, no? Why can't those other elements manage their own updates? You can have the server respond with an `HX-Trigger` header to dispatch an event and any elements that care about that event can listen for it. Far simpler than trying to coordinate surgical DOM updates in a single HTTP request. Events form the backbone of the browser environment and leaning into that model makes a lot of things much easier
  - xvinci 2y ago
    Fully ack. But this can actually be turned into something good imho: I try to challenge all layers (Analysis, UI / UX design) on simplicity: "Do we really need X parts of the page all be affected / updated by something? How could we design it differently with locality in mind? Can we simplify the state somehow?" -> I think that the resulting solutions are often simpler, cheaper, and work just as well.
sethammons 2y ago
maybe you can send me to the right tutorial. I'm a backend, distributed systems engineer. I have worked on eye-watering scale. React is anything but simple to me. I tried create-react-app, the thing built and downloaded for several minutes, and then there was a nest of file relationships that I didn't grok. It seemed like any change required three files to be updated. Lots of ancillary things like bundlers, packers, tree shakers, lions, tigers, and bears, oh my. After an hour, I didn't get what I was doing. Somehow, altering this function over here made this other thing over there go "moo." I used to do web development back in like 2001. I understand the web, http, css, html, and basic js. I'm not up on all the latest, but I have a very firm base. I got htmx working and pretty much fully digested in the same amount of time I wasted on React and have produced a working prototype. I find htmx to be like how the web used to be. It makes sense.
- vitaflo 2y ago
  FWIW, create-react-app is overloaded with every package you could ever potentially want to use for some weird reason. It's way overkill and I wouldn't recommend using it. It's much better just to use Vite with React as a plugin. Then you only need to install three React packages to get your app going. The best tutorial I've used was "Road to React" by Robin Weiruch. His example app you learn is how to build a Hacker News front page. Very clear and it goes step by step. Most of the tutorials online are all over the place, or mix Class tutorials with Hooks tutorials, or starts adding in things like Redux (which aren't needed). The person you're responding to is correct, at it's core React is very simple, especially if you just stick to hooks. Most of my code is just bog standard HTML (as JSX), CSS and JS with a few React hooks thrown in. FWIW, I've been doing frontend dev since '94 and personally find React jives the most for me and how normal HTML/JS/CSS work. I can see why people would like HTMX, but I've never liked overloading HTML attributes as some strange event model. But it's good there are choices.
- StressedDev 2y ago
  React has very good documentation and an excellent tutorial. Here is a link to it: https://react.dev/learn https://react.dev/learn . I recommend doing the exercises. They really help you learn React.
- 2y ago

greenavocado 2y ago

The reason is because all new technology is a staffing and training problem management needs to solve. Someone has to maintain your thing after its built and be ready when you leave the organization. If React can solve the issue in a similar timeframe and level of effort and it is easy to source React developers then obviously your proposal will be rejected because React is simply far easier to deal with from a training and staffing perspective for what you are trying to do. You need more merits to warrant the introduction of new languages and frameworks.

recursivedoubts 2y ago

That's a fair response: https://htmx.org/essays/when-to-use-hypermedia/#if-your-team-is-not-on-board https://htmx.org/essays/when-to-use-hypermedia/#if-your-team... the reality is that the only way to prove htmx is around for the long term is to stick around for the long term, and I hope this essay contributes towards that. We'll see how this years JS rising stars shakes out.

on_the_train 2y ago

Same story here, although the poison of choice is angular.

n144q 2y ago

Of course you get pushbacks. Is there any *real* advantage, technical or otherwise, at an organization level, of adopting this new model of creating web pages, other than your personal preferences? You are moving away from an established system with tools that everyone is familiar with, to a system that much fewer people use, with no clear performance/maintenance/management benefit (at least not demonstrated). Maybe you don't like writing JS/TS, but plenty of other people do, and they don't need to cater to your preferences. People need to spend time learning this tool. They need to be proficient with it. Your new stack might need to still work with existing code at some point. That means training, overhead, ramp up and potential risk in a less established area. Why would people do that? You should be thankful you didn't get warnings from your boss for messing around instead of actually pushing features out.