r/webdev BANS HTMX??

[@salvatoreshiggerino6810]

React has reached “nobody is ever fired for choosing…” status, whereas I’ve often gotten dirty looks for talking about HTMX and the need to cut down on the dependencies and layers of indirection. As wasteful as it is, building React behemoths with a gorillion dependencies and every new fad for styling, data fetching or state management all at the same time is the winning strategy for most professional developers. It’s all about racking up those billable hours.

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

you literally may be 100% correct and i am sad

[@adambickford8720]

TBF, i've been running that same grift in java for 20 years now.

[@buc991]

React is a small library, you can keep it as tiny as you wish and style and fetch all by pure css and js, you can use preact for even smaller size, but I believe react itself is small enough. No one is forcing you to add dependencies, you adding them by yourself. And opposite - if you will try to build something more then todo list in htmx, you will also add some styles, additional js libs and it will blow same, it’s just another js library, not silver bullet.

[@buc991]

Also how are you rack up dev time with additional libraries? They are used to develop something quickly if you have deadlines, otherwise you will spent weeks to reinvent, develop and test bycicles, that are already implemented multiple times, like datepickers or smth.

[@0oShwavyo0]

@@buc991my good friend, “date” is a standard input type for the HTML “input” element, so I assure you it should not require a library. This is sort of the point here, that over reliance on 3rd party code will lead to dependence and the inability to see how you might build something by yourself instead of reaching for a dependency. Then once you’re using libraries for everything you’ll start hitting dumb problems like “my 3rd party date picker component returns dates in a different format from my 3rd party date displayer component, so now I need to add another dependency to convert from the picked dates to the displayed dates.” And that’s when you’ll actually end up wasting more time than just having rolled your own in the first place.

[@spamviking8591]

It reminds me of that open letter that one of the reddit mods wrote that said something to the effect of "Fair discussion can only occur if we ban opposing viewpoints."

[@Kane0123]

Midwits only for all conversations

[@awesomedavid2012]

Makes sense. When your opinion is bullshit, yeah it's completely unfair when people with viewpoints with even a sliver of fact can come in and demolish you with facts and reason.

[@Kane0123]

you’re both wrong. Wrong. Fake news. Lalalalalalalalaa-imnotlistening-lalala

[@DiogoSilva-xx8nz]

u/Hitler, probably

[@0oShwavyo0]

@@awesomedavid2012I mean you’re acting like trolls don’t exist. People will 100% go into an argument with no good faith and spout their argument without even reading what the other side says.

[@RayAndrewsDev]

HTMX isn't a "new way to think about web dev" ... its the ORIGINAL way to think about web dev

[@doltBmB]

a return to sanity

[@abdoreda7126]

Different way of thinking than what some people are used to.

[@Chamieiniibet]

Yeah, the original 2-tier apps, like in the days before JavaScript was a thing, so a 2-symbol change took the entire page to be reloaded .

[@chpsilva]

​@@Chamieiniibet cry some more baby man

[@laughingvampire7555]

@@Chamieiniibet it was called 3 tier apps, 1. html 2. backend (Perl CGI/PHP) 3. data base because everyone was using SQL directly, NO ORM nonsense. hence the famous WAMP stack.

[@gabrielnbds]

imagine being so flooded with complexity that when a simple tool comes you cant use it

[@sutirk]

Truly one of the "I've learned React before i learned HTML" moments of all time

[@puddingcaketiem]

Almost all junior devs I encounter are this way. It's like they learned to walk by backflipping everywhere but when someone suggests powerwalking they get skeeved out.

[@P4INKiller]

Imagine completely misunderstanding the problem of being given a nail when you need a screw for the job, and be chastised for not being able to "use a simple tool". I absolutely loathe arrogant, self-proclaimed devs who aren't as bright as they seem to think they are.

[@MetroidChild]

Reminds me of the time I switched from GameMaker studio 1.4 to Unity, being able to use 3d assets natively and not being bound by having to write opengl shaders manually felt like stumbling upon advanced alien technology.

[@AnonymousAnonymous-l2i]

Yeah @@sutirk I feel that most modern webdevs don't have any deep knowledge just know couple of blackboxes that gives them dunnig krugger effect and arogance.."look at me of installing all this complexity of 2gb and making a simple button"

[@oat1000]

quitting reddit was one of the best things I've done for my mental health

[@Kane0123]

I always felt like I was an oddball not being on reddit… still feels bad at what it’s become

[@notlekrut]

And they made it really easy to quit with the API changes

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

can't be fired if you quit first probably a good move

[@VACatholic]

reddit is like 10,000x worse than digg was when tech people left digg for reddit. Not to mention Digg never had Ghislaine Maxwell as a power mod....

[@abrahamibrahimovic2866]

Right, it is not just the UI that was once so simple yet fulfilling that got bad. The Whole Reddit became a place of self-righteous Joseph McCarthy-like censors who censor every opinion that does not fit their bubble's opinion, which is mostly far from reality. Aaron Swartz would turn in his grave when he could see, what Reddit became. Rest in peace Reddit, you became irrelevant a long time ago.

[@kirillgimranov4943]

cause r/webdev think the web dev is a frontend development

[@complexity5545]

This is an underrated comment. touche.

[@clojurediary]

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" I think they are fighting htmx now.

[@cowabunga2597]

"then they throatfuck you, then they take a shit on you, then you win"

[@zachw566]

Or you go to prison like the woman who said that

[@clojurediary]

@@zachw566 And then we win

[@KodosUnofficial2-jq5oo]

i discovered your channel, thanks i will subscribe 😂

[@isaactfa]

You really gotta pour one out for webdevs who genuinely and understandably feel like returning html from a server is a new way of thinking that you gotta wrap your mind around first. We created this awful awful world for them and we should be ashamed.

[@SirMeowMeow]

Returning HTML fragments is a new way of thinking. Returning HTML is just called PHP or static.

[@DevanshGuptaChess]

@@SirMeowMeow It is how the web was envisioned. We took the wrong step when deciding how to implement reactive elements. It should have been the htmx way all along.

[@Chamieiniibet]

@@DevanshGuptaChess it is ASP (not even ASP.NET). If you're so hiped about it, means you've never actually used it. Moving over to AJAX+JSON was the best thing to ever happen to the WebDev. The original web was never intended to be dynamic, so returning "partial views" was always just a dirty hack.

[@fltfathin]

@@DevanshGuptaChess it's because the companies goes to the extreme of making client-side renderer that zips through small json and treat the website for web-application instead of website. whilst some other stick to old full SSR, we should've split it to two and developing htmx for website stuff and web-app (react and friends) for the fragments like the comment editor, forms, etc. also, webcomponents is overdue or just not get enough traction.

[@oleksiistri8429]

i hate devs, who like to overcomplicate everything, because not complicated things are not "fun" to them. and their projects become a slow , messy, big pile of shhhhhtuff stitched together.

[@complexity5545]

Bingo.

[@edmundob.guevarra9565]

soydevs in a nutshell

[@ricardodelacrvz1400]

and then they create new libraries and more frameworks with fancy names and designs like next js, and optimised query languages to improve performance on the already crap complexification they built over years. its like putting bandages over bandages and so on..

[@thingsiplay]

Web developers are screwed, no matter how you look at it.

[@Kane0123]

At this rate the web as a whole is screwed… I’m going back to straight html and css…

[@anon-fz2bo]

​@Kane0123 lame

[@danvilela]

At least we have jobs and money.. I was a firmware engineer couldn't land anything new and neither get a raise cause they knew I didn't have options :/ but web? job hopped three times, each of them doubled the last salary.

[@randomd00d19]

Real talk: I'm glad people are finally talking about this. It's getting impossible to keep up, guess what the next BIG thing is and what's going to get ignored. Just got out of a contract that used a lot of legacy react, css, and very generic skills overall. Just lifecycle methods and everything. If I want a new job, I am expected to know hooks like the back of my hand (maybe even better than I know myself). Know multiple backends. AWS or some other cloud service. Angular or EVEN VUE NOW (it was barely a thing when I started). And of course while Vue is fairly easy, everything is measured in years of on-the-job experience. And now we have the threat of AI forever lurking in the periphery of our minds because we know that AI might facilitate things enough that companies will only grandfather in the most senior developers to fix the occasional bug or unhandled weird edge case that AI can't solve. It's infuriating and anxiety inducing. It's not fun anymore. The "new cool framework" to tryout in your spare time is now mandatory learning, AT LEAST. If you aren't ingesting copious amounts of new code, frameworks, languages, and best practices in your spare time, you might as well be a junior developer forever. If you do things the way the current world expect you to, you get no free time. Hours off the job are for learning juuuuuust in case your company needs to cut its budget and you aren't the biggest gigachad coder in the office.

[@JT-mr3db]

There is a complexity masturbation that happens with many programmers. We just love the feeling of having a strong command of something complicated, knowing the ins and outs, the quirks and edges. All these things, achieved by deep focus, trial and error, becomes such a protected effort that the simplicity and power of HTMX is almost seen as insulting to them. There is certainly a time and place in a hypermedia focused app to lean on a framework for an island of interactivity, but it's rarer than you think. That should be celebrated imo.

[@CulturalArcher]

My case. I seems to have mastered all the ins and outs of react even all those edge case. I would love web to be simple though but job needs react mate. What do we do?

[@OzzyTheGiant]

Nah bruh, any time I see something simpler to use (Svelte, Astro, HTMX, Golang), I drop whatever tool I'm currently using and migrate to that. Whatever reduces maintenance time for me is the gold standard.

[@anarchoyeasty3908]

Or, get this, there are no jobs in htmx but there are tons of jobs in react using the latest meta frameworks.

[@1Yooter]

Lol masturbation

[@powderypastor1242]

To me, the true beauty of software (and most of life) comes out when you can keep things simple, minimal and elegant. People chasing complexity to flatter their ego is wild and juuuust a bit sad

[@MatthewSwabey]

HTMX allows piecemeal evolution of an existing website into a modern one. All the other practical approaches require a complete re-architect, retooling, and re-implementation in a new language. All those are very expensive, and very risky. HTMX is solid.

[@CottidaeSEA]

That is one of the things I really like about HTMX. You can just *use it* and if you don't want to, you don't. Even if you have it available to you, it's not a big choice which forces you to only use it.

[@Chamieiniibet]

What kind of "existing website" should that be to benefit from HTMX? Like, something from 1990s, written in PHP 1.0 or VBScript?

[@CottidaeSEA]

@@Chamieiniibet There are loads of websites that are written in something other than JavaScript. In fact it is most of them.

[@Chamieiniibet]

@@CottidaeSEA you can't write front-end in anything but JS.

[@CottidaeSEA]

@@Chamieiniibet HTML?

[@cd-zw2tt]

as a PHP lover, i love using old shit because so many people have already found the stumbling blocks. the longer a language sticks around and is useful, the more time people have to document and use it

[@0xzi]

I stopped going to r/webdev when someone made a personal project that was meant to be an interactive artistic experience and the entire thread, including a mod, were bashing the guy saying how horrible his site is and how he should rewrite it because he had the audacity to change the mouse cursor on his page. If you step out of line of design standards they lose their mind.

[@AScribblingTurtle]

Oh Reddit. I once asked the "r/typescript" what a "!" after a class property definition does and ended up in an hour-long discussion about "posting etiquette". Apparently posting code in that garbage text input of Reddit is "Better" than posting a link to a credible site that shows the same code with better formatting and highlighting.

[@Jabberwockybird]

Must have been a stack overflow mod who treats reddit as if it were the same thing

[@User948Z7Z-w7n]

That ! might be non-null assertion. Yeah pretty sure

[@User948Z7Z-w7n]

Use exercism you can get much nicer feedback for problems you solve. They have 74 computer language tracks and runs on donations only. Completely free

[@headlights-go-up]

Reddit mods are simply the cousins of Discord mods.

[@F38U]

They are the same people, just different apps

[@Sammysapphira]

Excessive self promotion has been against the rules of almost every single subreddit since reddit's inception. It's a contract of discourse for the site so it isn't just a place to spam self advertisement. The thread its self was an attention-seeking ad/study for the engagement of HTMX, and serves no purpose.

[@elzabethtatcher9570]

@@Sammysapphira Tell the people who happily laughed in that thread that them laughing serves no purpose.

[@diego.almeida]

and the sons of stackoverflow mods

[@SkylearJ]

The inbred cousins* of Discord mods

[@casadogaspar]

Being a Brazilian and as I always heard you talking about Brazil, I'm proud to say that Reddit is not a thing here. Most of the people don't even know Reddit exist.

[@rodrigohmoraes]

Most of the people anywhere in the world don't know Reddit exists. But if you consider just the demographic that watches this channel (young developers), then Reddit is quite popular (or at least known), even in Brazil

[@uplink-on-yt]

That means Laravel's Livewire is also on the chopping block, as it basically does the same thing.

[@funkdefied1]

What’s crazy to me about that guy not learning HTMX because he “didn’t have time” or whatever is that you can read all of HTMX’s documentation in about 3 hours. It’s not complicated. I think people are scared of sending HTML from the backend.

[@foreigngodx6]

It's quite shocking I know, but most people want to do nothing work related in their free time. Also just reading documentation dosent mean you will actually learn something.

[@KingSvenDeluxe]

I'm quite certain it was satire.

[@MsBukke]

The funny thing is that back when i used jquery most of the time i used it to get html from backend and replace elements in the frontend, so htmx is nothing new really

[@0oShwavyo0]

The statement “people are afraid to send html from the backend” is so bizarre to hear. Do they know that their backend is always serving some html, even if it’s just a tiny bit of boilerplate to get react set up?

[@GrantGryczan]

HTMX itself is not complicated but using it is an entirely new way of thinking about web development when you're already familiar with a completely different set of patterns from component land

[@ameer6168]

I'm using rust as a secondary language to feel good about myself i'm not forcing myself to be the best in it. I'm just enjoying the process of slow learning process. but on the other hand i'm also using typescript on my job so rust works as stress reliever. Javascript eco system won't even give you time to get better at basics

[@luabagg]

to feel good with yourself just program one handed and play w yourself with the other

[@jaysistar2711]

Do you remember when React 1st came out while JavaScript didn't have classes? They made their own class system, then adapted to the JavaScript classes when they came out, then told everybody to use functional components only with "hooks". That all happened at the same time that async/await was being added. The 2010s were pretty dynamic.

[@Kane0123]

Gotta keep HTMX off the open internet so chatgippity has no sources to generate it from… keep it locked away for true devs

[@jrock20859]

You would just add the docs to context, what do you think chatgpt is 😂 why are devs the ones that seems the most lost in how to utilize it properly

[@JanWeigangMusic]

Ironically, chatgpt made me look up htmx and i loved it instantly. Not a webdev by job.

[@whamer100]

3:25 aaaand that's why im not a web dev lmao fortunately C doesn't change much so im good to go

[@Reydriel]

Seriously this. Learn your fundamentals people!

[@Hobbitstomper]

Discord and Reddit mods... a never ending story of abuse of power. It's astounding that a big amount of moderators are kids in their late teens/early 20s, as well as adults who suffer from hypersensitivity and apophenia. They read into things where there is nothing, and try to analyze every single smiley face as a possible "hidden passive aggressive" comment. They are incapable of dealing with these situations in a professional manner. Any sort of criticism or sarcasm no matter how small and insignificant... BAM permanent ban.

[@Destide]

HTMX had the last laugh by remaining relevant in 2024

[@SebastianSastre]

React is the new VisualBasic. Change my mind.

[@pierreollivier1]

This is why I will never be a web dev, The web stack is absolutely broken imo, you can't be expected to be good at it when everything is changing everyday, I like C because if you learned C 10 years ago, it's almost the same language, the way you are coding is still very idiomatic, and you can read code from other people and immediately get it. There is also the benefit of being able to immediately spot inefficient or incorrect code, like I know this might seems crazy for web people but I can actually just look at some code, and immediately know if it's correct, performant, and idiomatic. That doesn't mean that change is not good, like I'm currently learning Zig, and getting more familiar with Ocaml, so there is a fine line between changing things all the time, and never learning anything new. But in the web world it seems like everyday there you are just becoming more and more useless if you don't invest time in learning the new how thing without even being sure that you are going to use it, I really feel bad for web people it must really be a pain to work in the web.

[@Parker8752]

Same. If it's hitting the point of people writing frameworks for frameworks, it's already reached the point of Fuck This.

[@siliconhawk]

the react way of thinking is really mind bending, i applied at a startup and they gave me this react application and asked me to complete this assignment, I swear to god and everything holy this thing is difficult to wrap my brain around, I dont "build" stuff this way hell my coding experience is all doing leetcode 💀💀 being a fresher with little "experience" makes me "unhireable" but trying to get this experience is making me go nuts.

[@jameslay6505]

This is going to sound pessimistic, but we'll see what kind of ecosystem they build around HTMX. There's already Alpine and Hyperscript. There will likely be a facade for common hx-attribute combinations and stuff like that. Even worse, maybe there will be a new ecosystem in every backend tech stack.

[@jameslay6505]

@@forest-dweller you're probably going to think I'm a numbskull, but I'm missing the relevance of the author. My thinking is that a large, complex ecosystem is a large, complex ecosystem regardless of who made it. Would you disagree?

[@YourComputer]

I wouldn't use htmx because I don't like the idea of having the backend perform server-side rendering and because innerHTML and outerHTML is slow when compared to DOM diffing and patching. Though, I'd be willing to change my mind if I can get the best of both worlds.

[@smddev]

I'm a new developer (2 years college experience) and I absolutely love htmx

[@riklaunim]

Many reddits have mods that decide what can or can't be posted. Usually creators are excluded and only meta news sources are allowed (and bots mass posting a link to 20 reddits, business posting GPT blog posts on subreddits for SEO and free traffic).

[@timseguine2]

I like the idea behind htmx, and I think they did a great job with it. I have always been a proponent of having html markup that is entirely semantic (whenever possible). And whatever frameworks you are using we are closer to that than we ever have been with modern CSS and shadow DOM. I think if htmx got shadow DOM support it would be a no brainer to use it. Without that, I do feel some urge to use a component system still. This is all theoretical since I don't do web dev professionally anymore, but I think if I got back into it today it would be rust + yew (In any case I feel that despite its improvements no amount of money can bring me back to regular javascript), and htmx is on the verge of convincing me it is a completely better developer experience

[@RA-xx4mz]

I got banned from Reddit AskReddit for saying, and I quote, “It is illegal to do crime.”

[@WewasAtamans]

Yeah this new version of JQuery called HTMX is real nice one. Too bad its missing most of the DOM manipulation tools and only has the content replace, so you'll need the old JQuery as well.

[@WewasAtamans]

That dude at @2:00 spoke for me. I dont have mental capacity to routinely work with 3 backend languages and 2 UI frameworks AND learn another one that does magic via HTML attributes.

[@TatharNuar]

The complexity of web dev is why I never stuck with web dev after learning HTML, Dreamweaver, and a little CSS in high school. And it's only gotten worse since then. (This stuff was supposed to be about documents hosted online, why are websites the equivalent of Excel roller coasters?)

[@mccafferyfamily]

i'm normally not a web dev (at least not since ~1999 b) usually doing lower level stuff like CPU emulation etc, but had a side project I wanted to build and node / react the complexity was insane...thanks to theprimagen heard about htmx with go and not hating web dev any more for my side projects ...

[@metropolis10]

Ah but what if the mod is a fan of htmx and knew this would make it blow up even more. That old calculated drama.

[@gJonii]

I've gotten plenty of bans from various subreddits. Haven't really changed my posting style over the years, slightly annoying corrections or saying unpopular things politely. The ban rate from subreddits and sitewide suspensions grew exponentially over the last 10 years, to the point I started getting banned from random subreddits like every month or so. Took me like 7 years to get my first ban too. Then a few years for the next. Then still few years for the next, with around this time sitewide suspension. It's an echo chamber, and they're quite open about it too. Most subreddits have rules that if you have different opinions than mods, that's bannable offense, and they've started to enforce those rules more aggressively lately, towards ever smaller deviations from the consensus. Don't know the latest status of the service, I quit around a year ago.

[@Exilum]

Everytime I feel like I'll get into htmx one day. Didn't happen yet, but I don't do webdev that often so yeah.

[@vcaalnu34]

Proudly sponsored by HTMX (™Carson Gross). Let's go MSU !!!!!!!!!! I believe!!

[@Netz0]

100% agree. It is such a nice little tool to bring some web elements alive with minimal work.

[@MehranGhamaty]

Pretty sure the next project I would work on would be HTMX. The amount of difficult to do things, which are offered out of the box in HTMX is mind-boggling.

[@1Caja]

I might need to finally take a look at it in my free time and maybe Go.

[@00wez]

whenever i express a little too much i get banned on reddit subreddit or reddit itself (7day)

[@neociber24]

I don't know why some devs think they need to learn any new thing, you can keep using the same thing and doing the same job. You can also pick what actually interest you, imagine being able to decide by your own

[@Kane0123]

The way prime talks it doesn’t feel like this is the case. You shift job and all of a sudden your experience means nothing in some new implementation of a thing you used to know… Gotta know both client and server side render else you’re at risk of not getting the job or becoming “obsolete” when your team makes the change

[@al3030]

In JS meta frameworks, they stop maintaining the old stuff or it becomes suboptimal. It’s a vicious cycle

[@neociber24]

@@Kane0123 yeah but thinking that way makes no sense if you want to improve, maybe you should not learn each new framework but being in touch which what you use makes sense for devs

[@anarchoyeasty3908]

@@neociber24It's not about if you want to improve. It's about being able to stay employed so you can take care of yourself and your family my guy. Learning htmx will do nothing to 1.) Improve your skills as a web dev and 2.) get you a job. If you don't know the frameworks that your future employers are using, you will not get a job. Even if you know the frameworks its hard as shit to get a job right now. My sr dev friend has been out of work for a year now and another for 6 months. Shit's scary out there and if you are needing to stay competitive learning HTMX is straight up a waste of time.

[@sharkpyro93]

frontend development its was like this for the past 15 years, its a complete joke, im glad i work on backend only and avoid that mess

[@iCrimzon]

Soy frontend devs vs Jigachad Go/Rust/PHP Swole + 80MX

[@meryplays8952]

The best non-music upload in youtube of 2023

[@AdamPippert]

Learning new things: awesome. Going through stacks faster than you change underwear because it’s the latest trend: horrific. Suppressing discussion about new tools build on older principles because it goes against your flavor of the week: shut up, if you’re not wrong now you will be in 5 years, so stop worrying about it.

[@CulturalArcher]

mate, we need jobs. Otherwise HTML and Css and js are my best friends. this enterprise jobs always need react or next.js. I just don't want it but I need money

[@sharkpyro93]

@@CulturalArcher switch to backend dev, no js framework bullshit on sight, stable tech stack and good money (better than frontend for sure)

[@jamlie977]

you either die a hero or live to become the villain

[@chm10323]

lol, the time of changing React into PHP's position is came ; )

[@dev--null]

I was on reddit when it was new and fresh place - 15 years ago, then left as it turned into garbage. Why is anyone still there is beyond me.

[@User948Z7Z-w7n]

I'm learning react and nextjs to get my first job but will move on to golang and other , better languages. Js dev for whole life ain't what I aspire to be

I love like this turned full 360 over years. This was done with js(jquery) and php(twig) for years on shared hostings. But now it's way harder and more expensive. And you have to compile stuff.

[@tonimacarroni5208]

Htmx looks good but I don’t think it can replace react, angular or whatever because htmx replaces html blocks so I don’t know if it’s good for high interactivity websites, json or grpc have less weight than a html blocks or that what’s logic says

[@User948Z7Z-w7n]

You can mix in some js codes with htmx. I think htmx will be really popular because at the very least it's going to be way more expressive and simple than react server component for ssr or ssg.

[@B20C0]

When I started web dev, framestets were still a thing, you had to code at least two versions of a website (thanks IE) and designs were table based. I honestly cannot tell you if I prefer the old shitshow to the new shitshow. I go back and forth on that one.

[@JordanLeGrand]

The problem with htmx is that on larger app with high to medium user traffic, the constant need to fetch data from the server doesn't seems like the best idea. Otherwise, by itself you may also want some deeper client-side interactivity that htmx doesn't seem really built for but maybe you can still do that on the side of htmx.

[@Gregorius421]

htmx is just for simple client-side interactivity.

[@orterves]

2:04 the irony of feeling like HTMX is too much change, when it's actually a return to the simpler ways of the past, just with partial page updates instead of full refresh

[@Joinemm]

have you considered making a tutorial video/explanation of how to build with htmx and why it's better?

[@Jabberwockybird]

And he did 🎆

[@AGAU1022]

The hatred of self-promotion on reddit is so silly, as is the whoever got there first system of mod dictatorship. Everyone's using fake names which means most of the self-promotion will go unnoticed, but if you're honest and use your real name you get punished.

[@codyclay88]

As far as I know, a professional carpenter is a master of like 15 different types of tools. Each one of those tools are used for a specific purpose. They don't use a hammer to drill a screw, and they wouldn't use a hand saw to drive a nail. One craftsman isn't called a "miter saw carpenter" while another is specifically a "jigsaw carpenter". They are just "carpenters", and a carpenter might use 5 different tools for the same job. A "miter saw carpenter" doesn't need to contract a "hammer carpenter" whenever he's done sawing the boards. The same carpenter can use lots of different tools, and a carpenter uses the best tool for the job. But in the software world, we are defined by the tools we use. We are "React Devs" or "Angular Devs" or "PHP Devs" or whatever. And I think this is because we get so attached to a particular tool that EVERYTHING BECOMES A NAIL for that tool. So then we start adding drill bits to our saw blades so that "saw carpenters" can also do work that only a qualified "screw-driver carpenter" should do. Because apparently no single person can build a table by himself.

[@jacekjacenty]

Your metaphor does not work because of the complexity we accumulated over the years. Also master carpenter is less likely to work under willfully ignorant managers.The customers may be willfully ignorant, but that is another story. The customer can still imagine and touch the table and the consequences of change of mind are not so catastrophic.

[@JohnDoe-jk3vv]

Software is not carpentry. Shocker.

[@amogus3023]

It's not as much about tool attachment as it is about the fact the tools we're dealing with are several orders of magnitude more complex than a hammer. You could spend years using only a single tech stack and still have tons of room to learn about it. Most developers I know aren't limiting themselves to the tools they work with by choice, but because it's the thing they're most familiar with and learning a new one on a case-by-case basis is just not efficient. I do wish we'd have good enough "primitive" set of tooling that once you mastered, you could apply to efficiently solve any problem as you could do if you were a carpenter. Unfortunately as the industry is right now, that's just not realistic, and drawing an analogy to that doesn't respect the complexities involved.

[@morkallearns781]

It’s not because we get attached to a tool, it’s because most people are lazy so they don’t actually bother learning fundamental computer science, and most companies are run by morons, so they don’t realize how dumb a statement like “React Dev” is.

[@codyclay88]

@@JohnDoe-jk3vv Haha, well I hope that's not all you took from my comment. My goal was to say that, in the same way that carpenters use lots of tools to build a table, not just a hammer, as software developers we have lots of tools at our disposal, not just React.

[@yuri0001]

My problem with htmx is reactivity. Writing data-first is amazing after struggling with jquery for so long. I know I can write something similar with templates but ping-ponging data with the server for things that don't require database interaction just feels BAD, not to mention the delay on every request.

[@Kalasklister1337]

That is what hyperscript is for. A lot of the time your front end feature can be added either through templates or snippet of js/hyperscript. HTMX does not want to block you from running light client side logic where it makes sense. It tries to be as simple as possible and gives you a higher level abstraction of js (hyperscript) to make client side snippets short and readable.

[@yuri0001]

@@Kalasklister1337 Ok but dynamic/expandable forms are a pain in my ass still. I just want to have an array and let the frameworks create the rows with components from it.

[@Kalasklister1337]

@@yuri0001 I can see that it can be more convenient and reactivity can indeed be nice. For me personally i will walk through fire and endure heavy storms as long as i dont have to get anywhere near the node stack or related things. Just looking at that thing is so painful that any inconveniences from doing things a bit more by hand in the language that is the best fit for the job is easily worth it for me. But everyone should make their own trade offs.

[@hotfishdev]

… isn’t that post self promotion? That’s, like, one of the main things that basically every subreddit prohibits in some way or another. Seems like a nothingburger.

[@legion_prex3650]

webdev got WAY tooo complex the recent years. for literally nothing. You can build all that stuff with pure javascript and html. Htmx is nice, because its easy and sane.

[@kirbyman1kanden7pf]

hello purist friend

[@Daijyobanai]

One of the biggest problems with react is the attitude, "I invested so much time in this over-complicated mess, I don't want to learn anything else". Same people are telling you Angular is "deprecated" lol, Vue is obsolete "no one uses it!", and everything else is "non-performant" like they know what that means. The reddit react subs and webdev are the worst places on the net for adult web devs to go, the FUD, lies and toxic hate on there is an embarrassment to us all.

[@jonahbranch5625]

I've been using react for nearly 75 years and it never really sit right with me. I always knew there had to be a better way so when htmx came out i switched and never turned back. I'm naming my third child htmx

[@RogerBytes]

Social networks are just the new kind of asylum. I'm better out.

[@Maric18]

in the year of our lord 2023 it is still possible to do just raw JS and some fancy html+css and build something basic but good looking. throw in some templating on the server side and you should be fine. HTMX feels like doing that but not actually having to write all the JS

[@atlascove1810]

That's exactly what appeals to me the most.

[@lpanebr]

Maybe Reddit is using AI moderators and we're just seeing the actual first steps of Skynet...

[@RifazNahiyanFWS]

Getting html responses from the server, without an intermediary JSON is superb. Hits just right. What I wonder is, suppose you need to parse (and process) that response _client side_. For example when the user wants to re-order a list of items that were returned from the server, isn't it easier to implement the reorder in JSON - JavaScript's natural habitat - instead of mangle wrangling HTML with JS to get the reorder?

[@hipertracker]

Astro might be the cure for all that frontend complexity.

[@eduardflorea9823]

I am sticking by Svelte.... abandon React 2 years ago... I am interested in learning WASM, and having a nice integration between WASM and Svelte....with a Rust back end.....and yes no ORM...

[@k00k]

"HTMX is a breath of fresh air" - 100% agree!

[@mote8085]

This dude is docter disrespect in another life.

[@kpamkar]

Blaming lack of curiosity on work is really a cop-out. If someone is already as good as they say at web-dev, they will obviously have transferable skills. That's like saying that you will stick to English in France even if the latter will get your farther.

[@StingSting844]

Htmx haters are frontend/backend devs who are afraid of becoming full stack devs 😅

[@OzzyTheGiant]

I love being full stack. I need to have control of data at every point of the app, from the CSS styles it uses to the row it takes up on the database

[@rmbl349]

.NET guy here. I scrapped my blazor frontend for htmx lol

[@CulturalArcher]

I am just burned out. It started as so much fun. I loved those colors being set in screen, those animations, sliders and creating something powerful. I learned PERN(postgres). I soon as I seems to be good at it. There is new framework in our locality creating new Buzz. Next.js. Will it ever stop? Like serioulsy ? What should I learn? Next or become better at PERN ? can anybody help me?

[@majorhumbert676]

A professional developer must keep up with the changes in this field, just like a physician must keep up with the latest developments in their fields, it's as simple as that. You must be in charge of your own career because nobody will give you a prescription of how to do your job. If it was that simple, your job wouldn't exist. Perhaps you chose the wrong career.

[@Jabberwockybird]

The PRNDL? like in a car?

[@Sound_.-Safari]

Don’t forget that minor/medium/major changes create a ton of outdated documentation and muddy water for anyone trying to learn

[@leemcd56]

I quit using Reddit after the API debacle and I couldn’t use Apollo anymore. Deleted my account and never looked back. Rest in many pieces, Reddit.

[@paulonteri]

I like this short form content

[@paulgupta2454]

Honestly if this had a decent amount of battery life and ran Linux well I'd ditch my MacBook for this

[@firesoul453]

Reddit is crazy. You can be permanently banned for asking a beginner question because you didnt know the coreect terminology.

[@doltBmB]

they forget markup and scripting languages are supposed to make things easier for humans to read and write!

[@freeideas]

I clearly don't understand ANYTHING about web dev, even though I have done it on and off for decades now. PLEASE SOMEONE, TELL ME WHAT I CAN'T DO WITH STATIC HTML/CSS/JS ON A WEB BROWSER, THAT READS AND WRITES JSON FROM A REST API? We started doing that in the 1990's and I honestly don't understand why we need all these ultra complicated frameworks for writing a goddamn web page with some goddamn form fields!!

[@freeideas]

Btw, my rant here might be considered an endorsement of HTMX. Only part of it that I think is unnecessary is loading HTML snips from the server. Why not just load data from the server and keep all the HTML on the browser? Fortunately HTMX can do it that way no problemo.

[@ram_bam]

FE web dev is the ultimate hamster wheel of burnout.

[@ttuurrttlle]

I really don't like ORM's. I've felt like that's an unpopular opinion, but I honestly just never understood why. I suppose it's useful if you're connecting to multiple different types of databases with different sql syntax that the ORM does for you behind the scenes. But I rarely do that, it's either just MSSQL or Postgres for me at work and they are similar enough that just learning the basic syntax of each has served me far better than learning an ORM that I might or might not be able to use on a project.

[@natescode]

Fair enough. ORMs have benefits but there is nothing better than peeling away often unnecessary abstractions.

[@xealit]

about the complexity in the web, from a not a web developer's view, it just seems like not all that complexity is needed really. That's what makes it unfair. It seems like HTMX delivers real features, like AJAX and WebSockets, without a lot of hustle.

[@iooosef6006]

most HTMX-haters are js-framework-kiddies

[@rebook0]

Problem with HTMX is library size and state management. It doesn't work well with bundlers. It ships 12.5kb which is too much for most apps. State management is also bad. One thing we should avoid is sending HTML via Ajax requests. Template part should be available and already loaded on client side(usually through React.js). JavaScript libraries like React simplifies our workflow.

[@amogus3023]

The biggest problem with HTMX is the loss of traceability with how data flows through the system to me. On that front, React with TypeScript is the only realistic option for a web server + client with end-to-end strong type checks of data throughout the entire stack that I'm aware of. I do like HTMX as a concept, but I wouldn't want to introduce it to a (non-legacy) project due to how loosely coupled it is & how hard it can make e.g. refactoring in the future due to non-obvious dependencies with code & data.

[@natescode]

​@@rebook012.kb is too much so you load React and all its bloat instead? Just go back to server side rendering

[@edmundob.guevarra9565]

React soydevs vs HTMX chads

[@Quincycle]

@@rebook0is this satire? You're worried about 12kb when you ship React to the browser 😅

[@complexity5545]

Its all about corporate job security (for money) to give the 95% something to do. Its a social club. You other 5% basically are contractors or entrepreneurs or principal engineers.

[@majorhumbert676]

HTML is a serialisation format for articles. The fact that we're building applications with HTML is an idiotic coincidence. As you have already mentioned, HTML was meant for static documents like articles. That's why the terminology is centered around paragraphs, headings, titles, bullet lists, etc. It's pretty much a coincidence that we ended up with an XML-like markup language. If things would have started slightly differently, we could have ended up with something like Markdown or LaTeX instead. That would certainly be a more ergonomic language to write articles in. And then today we'd be arguing about whether to render Markdown/LaTeX from JavaScript in the browser, or render it from servers with LaTeX-X or MarkdownX. The true answer is that we should move away from HTML entirely, as it's neither suited for writing static articles nor for developing dynamic applications.

[@zookaroo2132]

But the real takeaway topic is whether you should favor no-js. Htmx is certainly one way to do it and it just happens to have html with it. If, just if, we start over by md or latex it couldve been the same mess what js give to markdown or latex. Giving solution e.g. htmx MarkdownX or latexx doesnt mean html being the whole mess. I think it's just react

[@knolljo]

what is this go templ thing and how does it work? looks like a “type safe” template that can get some nice lsp suggestions

[@tehmoros]

After over 20 years of developing on the web, I can clearly say: HTMX+web components all the way. :)

[@socialkruption]

Time to troll and link this video in that sub. /r/frontend is trash as well.

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

haha, that would be so awesome

[@MarcoZanon]

THE VIDEO WE WERE ALL WAITING FOR

[@jonathanlambrecht5642]

oh no man chad G pity is going to leave us without jobs, nothing happens, htmx is cheaper to develop than every thing else, wipes out half of front end developers...its normal to block this kind of things but the market is the market and there is nothing you can do to maintain the status quo, eventually is going to pop if it is really really good, as i think it is.

[@namaefumei]

Very very true. If you use a horrible tool all the time for a long time you'll get good at it even if it's a shit tool like react. More people use it so mote things are created so more people use it.

[@megaing1322]

I would like to know what exactly the reddit mod's reason for banning was. Was it self promotion? Was it spam? Was it that they just didn't like it/him? Just listening to _htmx's story isn't exactly fair and unbiased either.

[@user-mahaka2002]

HTMX + Alpine JS + Ruby on Rails 😊

[@jtms1200]

What’s old is new again… with a twist! Returning server rendered HTML was the original way to handle “AJAX” over 20 years ago. Also - continuous learning and adapting is literally the entire game so suck it up and do it.