> absolutely trivial and avoids a dependency.

I disagree with this other than in a simple example. Updating something that depends on sth is far from trivial. It looks trivial.

> The true price is that you've now rewritten your HTML code in a non-standard DSL and are forever dependent on a third party library

So, like React. Prob also a build and scaffolding tool, and a linter were added in that case.

Regarding arsthetic I actually find htmx kind of ugly but it works so well I cannot ignore it. It simplifies everything a lot, but I am just discussing here.