I really like htmx, and intercooler.js before it. It's been a while since I tried to convince a co-worker to use it, it might be time to try again. Either way I can't wait to try out the new version.
Full Disclosure, I am CEO of HTMX
dec0dedab0de
Congrats and thanks! htmx brings me joy.
Pretty much every experiment I build now starts with Go, htmx, and SQLite to keep things simple and fast but still responsive.
Maybe a contrarian view, but as someone very knowledgeable about .NET API backends + angular on the frontend, I've found that HTMX made things more difficult as it required me to move back to mixing presentation concerns with business-logic and data concerns (basically have the backend produce the UI, which is whole point of HTMX).
This is not a criticism but I suspect that the people enjoying HTMX are either people preferring old-school server-side rendering or react users.
Just sharing my experience, because HTMX is the absolute darling of hacker news.
Since i mainly develop real SPA, i found that is more complex than just using typscrpit if you build something non-trivial as managing state on the server is not fun at all.
In my opinion if you are happy using angular, you'll find that HTMX is a step backward in terms for dev experience. Can't speak about react, but since it is not a battery included stack unlike Angular, i can understand why many people find they'd be better off moving things server-side instead of messing around with 15 third-party libraries. My 2 cents
rednb
Congrats on the release. The next stage is probably some real world comparison between DataStar and HTMX 4.0. Or against Hotwire / Turbo.
And perhaps the long term goal is if half if not most of HTMX 4.0 could be inside HTML 5 spec.
ksec
Somewhat of an aside: it's ironic the that some of the clearest, most concise technical documentation I now find on the Internet has come out that way because it was written for a machine: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bigskysoftware/htmx/v4.0.0...
Human readers don't receive this level of care or attention.
So far I've used a little bit of htmx (2) for one of them, and I really love it. Just a few attributes and we get some very reasonable progressively enhanced client/server interactive elements without full page loads.
Not sure I would choose if I had to make a SPA - it's partially from ignorance, but right not not sure how to avoid spaghetti. But I think it makes me even more strongly consider _not_ making a SPA
michalc
> `hx-alpine-compat` - smooths over compatibility issues between htmx and Alpine.js
I looked into this when I tried HTMX 4 on a project earlier this year. I actually found that https://alpine-ajax.js.org/ was smaller than HTMX while providing all the features I needed. It is one of the sanctioned projects they link to so I felt good using it
james2doyle
A thoughtful, clean, and useful library that wasn't built to climb the corporate ladder. It grew organically. I think it became a cry of relief for those annoyed by unnecessary complexity, which also boosted its recognition. It served as a starting point for things like Datastar, too. I believe it brought a refreshing breath of air to the frontend landscape.
threesmegiste
As the CEO of HTMX, I've never used HTMX but I've been keeping an eye on the releases, essays, and talks. Congratulations to the team.
miguel-muniz
Before vibe coding was a thing, HTMX made it super easy for me to implement Ajax like features. It was the most approachable library I've ever seen, and I'll always be grateful for it.
comments (10)
Full Disclosure, I am CEO of HTMX
dec0dedab0de
Pretty much every experiment I build now starts with Go, htmx, and SQLite to keep things simple and fast but still responsive.
I put a few more thoughts about this here:
https://housecat.com/blog/the-hugs-stack-hypermedia-unix-go-...
nzoschke
This is not a criticism but I suspect that the people enjoying HTMX are either people preferring old-school server-side rendering or react users.
Just sharing my experience, because HTMX is the absolute darling of hacker news.
Since i mainly develop real SPA, i found that is more complex than just using typscrpit if you build something non-trivial as managing state on the server is not fun at all.
In my opinion if you are happy using angular, you'll find that HTMX is a step backward in terms for dev experience. Can't speak about react, but since it is not a battery included stack unlike Angular, i can understand why many people find they'd be better off moving things server-side instead of messing around with 15 third-party libraries. My 2 cents
rednb
And perhaps the long term goal is if half if not most of HTMX 4.0 could be inside HTML 5 spec.
ksec
Human readers don't receive this level of care or attention.
hliyan
So far I've used a little bit of htmx (2) for one of them, and I really love it. Just a few attributes and we get some very reasonable progressively enhanced client/server interactive elements without full page loads.
Not sure I would choose if I had to make a SPA - it's partially from ignorance, but right not not sure how to avoid spaghetti. But I think it makes me even more strongly consider _not_ making a SPA
michalc
I looked into this when I tried HTMX 4 on a project earlier this year. I actually found that https://alpine-ajax.js.org/ was smaller than HTMX while providing all the features I needed. It is one of the sanctioned projects they link to so I felt good using it
james2doyle
threesmegiste
miguel-muniz
havaloc