Yeah, htmx looks endearingly simple but I worry we might be painting ourselves into a corner. Not sure what happens when you need more "bespoke" functionality. I didn't really look into it at all, maybe I don't need to worry?
I have been using HTMX with Django for over 3 years on multiple (client) projects.
In 99% of the cases, it works just fine. In the 1% of highly interactive components that aren’t working well with HTMX, you can just put in some Vue or alpineJS. whichever works best for you.
I have migrated all of my own and client apps from a decoupled Vue/django setup to HTMX. It was a ton of work, but it’s awesome having a clean setup with no node modules.
I think you mention a very valid point that is worth reiterating: Even when you enter territory where HTMX gets cumbersome for some reason, you can still use custom JS or some other library to work around it.
I admit that I initially started to use HTMX to avoid JS, but I am now more comfortable than ever before to fall back to some lines of Javascript in the few cases where HTMX does not feel like a great fit to solve the problem at hand.
Another great side effect (that you also mentioned) is how much cleaner the project is structured now. But I also realize that this might not apply to big projects.
> I admit that I initially started to use HTMX to avoid JS, but I am now more comfortable than ever before to fall back to some lines of Javascript in the few cases where HTMX does not feel like a great fit to solve the problem at hand.
Many people don't realize that great engineering happens under constraints. When you're faced with an empty project and the full power of JavaScript, you have 5,000,000 ways to do something and the chance to make a series of wrong choices that back you into a corner is high. By contrast, when you're working within a system that constrains the available choices, the possible design paths are considerably fewer and so the system becomes more understandable and maintainable, which makes for a very straightforward, comfortable dev experience.
The same goes for great design, of course figuring out the constraints is the trick with design - when there aren't really the same hard hardline guardrails that programming languages have; I suppose platforms like Figma attempt to create relatively rigid rails to follow.
Yeah, htmx looks endearingly simple but I worry we might be painting ourselves into a corner. Not sure what happens when you need more "bespoke" functionality. I didn't really look into it at all, maybe I don't need to worry?