At the end of the day, neather approach really has features over the other. HTMX doesn't forbid other JS components.

I think HTMX appeals to fullstack devs like me who often find themselves needing bespoke API calls for their frontend views anyway.

When writing tightly coupled backend code for a frontend view, I'm quick to think "well why am I not doing this entire feature in the backend, anyway?" And HTMX makes that super easy without giving much up.

But the opposite reaction would be equally valid.