Why Gumroad Didn't Choose Htmx • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Gumroad Didn't Choose Htmx

#21

Post by kunley » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 7:42 PM UTC

recursivedoubts wrote: post #14

My comment from the other thread: The CEO of gumroad mentioned on twitter that he had tried out htmx for a project but decided to go with NextJS instead. I asked him if he was willing to write up his experience and he graciously agreed to do so. I have been looking for a thoughtful negative experience with htmx to host on the htmx website and I am very thankful he was willing to put in the work to produce one.

Very useful explanation, because at first it seemed unusual to see it on htmx.org, but well, different projects have different needs.

Re: Why Gumroad Didn't Choose Htmx

#22

Post by WD-42 » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 7:43 PM UTC

Here is what I don’t understand about this post: if they knew they needed complex ux with realtime collaboration, why did they even reach for HTMX to start with? The author could have spent an hour going through the HTMX docs and would realize it’s not a good fit instead of wasting who knows how much time actually implementing it.

This reeks of ad-hoc vibe-driven development.

Re: Why Gumroad Didn't Choose Htmx

#23

Post by tptacek » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 7:46 PM UTC

zackerydev wrote: post #3

This is a wonderful advertisement for the things that HTMX is good for and the thing it isn't. It's obviously tongue-and-cheek but I think it makes the case well!

Why is this tongue-and-cheek? Doing this sincerely is a huge confidence builder.

Re: Why Gumroad Didn't Choose Htmx

#24

Post by ensignavenger » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 7:46 PM UTC

zackerydev wrote: post #3

This is a wonderful advertisement for the things that HTMX is good for and the thing it isn't. It's obviously tongue-and-cheek but I think it makes the case well!

What makes you think it was tongue-in-cheek? It sounds quite genuine to me?

Re: Why Gumroad Didn't Choose Htmx

#25

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 7:47 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Why Gumroad Didn't Choose Htmx

#26

Post by ensignavenger » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 7:48 PM UTC

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #18

I literally only ever hear about htmx from YC. I still don't know what the point of it is, it seems like one of those opinionated programmer things like "I don't use a framework" or "you don't need javascript to make my site work"

HTMX is getting a lot of attention from other communities to, another one I am part of is the Django community, which talks about it a lot.

Re: Why Gumroad Didn't Choose Htmx

#27

Post by jonathan-adly » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 7:48 PM UTC

fsndz wrote: post #16

I will start using htmx as soon as there is a 20K MRR startup built only with it.

My startup using htmx was there - and it was acquired successfully.

They migrated pretty quick to react after the acquisition due to team dynamics (offshore big teams - seeped into JS heavy client, thin server culture). htmx was a struggle there as well.

It worked amazing for us as a small team where everyone was full stack and I always build using htmx-first now. But, it is a struggle for folks who have been working in React-like patterns for 5+ years and never experienced the bless of MVC apps.

Re: Why Gumroad Didn't Choose Htmx

#28

Post by jokethrowaway » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 7:48 PM UTC

I use Htmx to add little functionality to static pages and it works great.

I used it recently to build a small crud admin page and I soon reached the limits of the technology; in the ends I rewrote it in solid.js - because next.js / react are pretty slow and employ the wrong abstractions.

I think htmx for static + solid.js for interactive is a great combination - albeit I dream of a framework which will excel at both.

Re: Why Gumroad Didn't Choose Htmx

#29

Post by ryanchants » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 7:51 PM UTC

ketzo wrote: post #20

> AI and Tooling Support: It’s worth noting that AI tools are intimately familiar with Next.js and not so much with htmx This is stated as a very matter-of-fact downside, but this is a pretty crazy portent for the future of dev tools / libraries / frameworks / languages. Predictions: - LLMs will further amplify the existing winner-take-all, first-mover nature of dev tools - LLMs will encourage usage of open-source to…

I was considering this other day. AI tools are stuck at a particular point in time. And even training them on newer stuff, there's only so much information to train on. I've been exploring this being a _good_ thing. In software we spend so much time chasing the latest tooling, language features, frameworks, etc. Maybe it'll be a positive that it all stagnates a bit and we just use the tools we have to get work done instead of creating new hammers every 6 months.

Re: Why Gumroad Didn't Choose Htmx

#30

Post by hencq » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 7:51 PM UTC

recursivedoubts wrote: post #14

My comment from the other thread: The CEO of gumroad mentioned on twitter that he had tried out htmx for a project but decided to go with NextJS instead. I asked him if he was willing to write up his experience and he graciously agreed to do so. I have been looking for a thoughtful negative experience with htmx to host on the htmx website and I am very thankful he was willing to put in the work to produce one.

Your attitude to call out where htmx might not be the best solution, makes me respect the project even more. It's refreshing to see this compared to lots of other projects that always seem to claim to be the best solution for everything.

I'm curious in particular about the call out around drag-and-drop. Is that something you agree with? Is drag and drop difficult with htmx and if so, is that something you plan on tackling?