I have a lot of experience in JS - even contributed to MooTools back in the day, until the team left to create React.

I run node on one server, Nginx with Php on another, and have plenty experience with many of the front end frameworks.

Try designing a web page - say the product page of a shoe store - multiple times. First try as though you have React (or Vue, Svelte, Angular, etc.), but never heard of HTMX, then try with HTMX as though you never heard of React, etc.

OK, its a bit of an apples to oranges comparison, especially if you would use hotwire or whatever.

Now, test those pages for responsiveness and ease of maintenance.

I did that, and the HTMX version won hands down. I was pretty surprised. You should try it; then comment again.

I now use HTMX extensively, and avoid frameworks unless they would really save time and effort.

Were those really the issues in the dark times?

To me those times are back when very incompatible scripting languages, with very incompatible browser DOM implementations roamed the land.

The simplicity of MPAs, the immediate feel of just writing to disk and refreshing the browser, without any slow transpilation process - this is how I remember the "dark times" of htmx.