HN Explorer

Poll: Is the rise of Htmx another episode of over-hyped JavaScript libraries?

4 points by ahmedfromtunis ↗ HN
I have the perception that everyone is suddenly (over-?)enthusiastic about HTMX.

People are touting it as the antidote to complex front-end toolchains and "bloated" frameworks like Angular and React.

Do you think that HTMX is worth the hype?

7 comments

[ 6.9 ms ] story [ 83.8 ms ] thread
DLA
Having used HTMX for several projects, no it’s not over-hyped, it’s an awesome way to build on the web.
arethuza
"it's a glorified/bastardized jQuery"

I'm struggling to see why you would compare jQuery and HTMX?

alethiophile
I assume "jQuery" here is being used as a metonym for the old frontend style where you would use the jQuery AJAX and DOM functions to query HTML fragments and swap them in. This is only really related to jQuery in that it used jQuery utility functions; under modern conditions you would just use fetch() and querySelector() etc to do the same thing.

It's true that the core concept of HTMX is very simple, and you could probably reimplement any given particular use case in a few lines. However, it is in fact a big advance over the manual HTML-fragment style, precisely because it abstracts over the particulars. Standardizing on a particular, good design is an important benefit even if the functionality of the code is easy.

arethuza
Yes - I can see why that particular comparison makes sense. However, not sure if that was the standard (or even most common) way of using jQuery whereas with HTMX it's pretty much the only option you have?
mkaltar
it adds value for sure, just depends on the project you are working on. The creator did not create this as an end all/be all for javascript frameworks... just a nice refreshing take on an alternative way.
tempaccount1234
It might be hype, but it allowed me as a Python backend dev to build things without spending too much time learning the big JavaScript frameworks, just some vanilla JS needed. But no npm, node or build tools. And since it’s server focused, the server logs tell a useful story. And btw, hype is good, because we currently lack good concepts on how to organize the html fragments served by htmx. Before htmx came around, I was sure that I’d have to at least learn vue.js, now I’m happy I don’t .