Comment by whizzter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by whizzter | Hacker News Reader

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I think HTMX as "simple" solutions comes into the same class as you mention "django being too heavy".

Sure, Django,Rails,Asp MVC,etc with static pages could be fully functional for something that is 99% CRUD.

But I myself foolishly tried using static view+HTMX for something that should have been built with something more dynamic like Vue/React(perhaps Alpine?) from the start due to actual client-side complexity.

In general imho one should classify what your main interaction points are and use the correct tools for each.

- Is it static pages for masses of consumers with little to no interaction? (Ie a news-site,etc) then fast SEO-friendly pages is your nr 1 priority.

- Is it mainly massive CRUD updates that needs persistence, go with server built pages with Django, Rails, etc.

- Is it an actual client/data heavy UI (games but also scenarios where you want fast client data slicing or processes/sources that complete at different paces), use an SPA.

Ie, right tool for the right job.

Who could argue with the "right tool for the job"? I am not saying that there are no use cases for other approaches.

But when you say you had a "static view" (in singular, not plural) with HTMX, what do you mean? I am very interested in hearing what kind of complex interaction you had where that approach failed?

With HTMX, I have found the most useful approach is to build your pages from lots of very small components. Initially, I don't worry about reuse of those components, it is more about decomposition than reuse.

Of course, if you want to do "fast client data slicing", then HTMX makes no sense, because it pushes logic to the backend and by definition your solution wants to process data in the fronted. So if you start from that premise, HTMX is obviously the wrong tool.

If you want to use HTMX, you need to rethink your solution, i.e. question whether you really need "fast client data slicing". So why bring all the data to the frontend, and not just the slice you want to visualize?

One reasonable use case is reducing server load. I have one app where data is loaded from static generated pages (periodically updated, for performance, stability and reduced server load), and sorting is done on the frontend using Javascript, based on data attributes on the DOM.

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