Please just try HTMX • Hacker News Board

Re: Please just try HTMX

#481

Post by mexicocitinluez » Sat, Dec 20, 2025, 1:36 PM UTC

azangru wrote: post #472

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am deeply baffled by this kind of response. No you're not. You're just trying to respond with something witty. It's a message board with 1% of the functionality most sites people are building with frameworks. > Firstly, because this site happily handles the amount of traffic that puts many hobbyist sites that happen to get on its front page into a hug of death; Lol are you really implying it's hard to scale a mes…

> Lol are you really implying it's hard to scale a message board? I am implying that it is beyond the "3 pages from W3Schools", as you put it. > A. Message. Board. Yes. A fast, reliable, accessible message board that I and many others thoroughly enjoy. An awesome product. Again, I have never suggested that its ui is complex. In fact, it's glorious how simple it is. This is the point that those htmx people make: use s…

> this site is amazing!

NO. IT. ISN'T.

lol. Anytime React is mentioned people like you rush in to tell others just how great stuff like...checks notes...a message board is. As if it in any, way, shape or form adds to the conversation.

You just couldn['t help yourself from rushing in to defend the simplest site on the planet (lol written in LISP) as if it demonstrates anything other than some rando building a w3 schools site in a language no one uses anymore.

Re: Please just try HTMX

#482

Post by mexicocitinluez » Sat, Dec 20, 2025, 1:39 PM UTC

azangru wrote: post #473

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? That doesn't change the fact that HN is a dirt simple message board anybody could build.

> That doesn't change the fact that HN is a dirt simple message board anybody could build. What is this an objection to? If you follow this thread upwards, where was it suggested that we should be talking about things so complex that nobody, or only very few, could build? The whole pitch of htmx is that it is proposed for building things that anybody could build. The article in the title assumes that the target audie…

It's an objection to this:

> How many jobs do you see on the market that ask for Lisp? And yet, for what it is, this site is amazing! I don't see them rushing to migrate to a python backend and a react-based frontend, no matter how many jobs there are for those.

You pointing out that the dumb simple message board is written in LISP and doesn't need anymore more is a bit absurd.

No shit they aren't rushing to upgrade it. IT BARELY DOES ANYTHING TO BEGIN WITH.

Anytime a certain class of developer see the word "React" that end up saying the most ridiculous shit. Nobody, I mean nobody, thinks HN is a site worthy of replicating or achieving unless they're part of the .0000002% who couldn't find a prepackaged board from Google search results.

Re: Please just try HTMX

#483

Post by nsonha » Sat, Dec 20, 2025, 1:41 PM UTC

azangru wrote: post #162

librasteve wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTMX Sucks https://htmx.org/essays/htmx-sucks/

> No Jobs > Another practical reason not to use htmx is that there are, rounding off, zero htmx jobs. > I just did a search for htmx jobs on indeed and found a grand total of two: one at Microsoft and one at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. > A search for “react”, on the other hand, gives 13,758 jobs. > Seriously, developer, which of these two technologies do you want to hitch your career to? I do not advocated for htm…

That's obviously just an article pretending to criticise htmx

Re: Please just try HTMX

#484

Post by azangru » Sat, Dec 20, 2025, 4:06 PM UTC

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #482

azangru wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That doesn't change the fact that HN is a dirt simple message board anybody could build. What is this an objection to? If you follow this thread upwards, where was it suggested that we should be talking about things so complex that nobody, or only very few, could build? The whole pitch of htmx is that it is proposed for building things that anybody could build. The article in the title assumes that the target audie…

It's an objection to this: > How many jobs do you see on the market that ask for Lisp? And yet, for what it is, this site is amazing! I don't see them rushing to migrate to a python backend and a react-based frontend, no matter how many jobs there are for those. You pointing out that the dumb simple message board is written in LISP and doesn't need anymore more is a bit absurd. No shit they aren't rushing to upgrade…

> Nobody, I mean nobody, thinks HN is a site worthy of replicating or achieving

Wait what? You haven't seen all the hackernews clones that people make as an exercise of website building? You haven't seen lobste.rs?

Re: Please just try HTMX

#485

Post by azangru » Sat, Dec 20, 2025, 4:12 PM UTC

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #481

azangru wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lol are you really implying it's hard to scale a message board? I am implying that it is beyond the "3 pages from W3Schools", as you put it. > A. Message. Board. Yes. A fast, reliable, accessible message board that I and many others thoroughly enjoy. An awesome product. Again, I have never suggested that its ui is complex. In fact, it's glorious how simple it is. This is the point that those htmx people make: use s…

> this site is amazing! NO. IT. ISN'T. lol. Anytime React is mentioned people like you rush in to tell others just how great stuff like... checks notes ...a message board is. As if it in any, way, shape or form adds to the conversation. You just couldn['t help yourself from rushing in to defend the simplest site on the planet (lol written in LISP) as if it demonstrates anything other than some rando building a w3 sch…

> rushing in to defend the simplest site on the planet

This 'simplest site on the planet' does the job that it is tasked to do. Brilliantly. I am baffled by why you would scorn at simplicity.

> as if it demonstrates anything

It demonstrates that a great product (a product that many people use and love) can be built with simple tools. At least on the frontend.

Re: Please just try HTMX

#486

Post by krapp » Sat, Dec 20, 2025, 4:32 PM UTC

azangru wrote: post #484

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an objection to this: > How many jobs do you see on the market that ask for Lisp? And yet, for what it is, this site is amazing! I don't see them rushing to migrate to a python backend and a react-based frontend, no matter how many jobs there are for those. You pointing out that the dumb simple message board is written in LISP and doesn't need anymore more is a bit absurd. No shit they aren't rushing to upgrade…

> Nobody, I mean nobody, thinks HN is a site worthy of replicating or achieving Wait what? You haven't seen all the hackernews clones that people make as an exercise of website building? You haven't seen lobste.rs?

lobste.rs is people from HN who think HN isn't nearly strict and niche enough.

All of those hacker news clones are by Hacker News people for Hacker News people, usually to implement features Hacker News never will.

Nobody outside of the HN community is holding up Hacker News as an exemplar of superior design or engineering, much less of a Lisp implementation. Anyone who's touched the Arc Lisp forum code knows how few fucks pg gave about the design of anything but the language itself. And still the original forum was so inefficient it would keel over and die under moderate traffic and internal links would time out and people's comments would just never post.

Re: Please just try HTMX

#487

Post by joeevans1000 » Sat, Dec 20, 2025, 4:42 PM UTC

Weird, Safari reloads the page on the demo button clicks and Chrome does not.

UPDATE: the second visit to the page on Safari didn't have the issue. It's interesting to note that some people might have that effect though... reloads on Safari occasionally for whatever reason. Or it could be something rare on my end.

Re: Please just try HTMX

#488

Post by ceuk » Sat, Dec 20, 2025, 7:20 PM UTC

weiliddat wrote: post #478

ceuk wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I built a pretty featureful P2P planning poker app using React and it's around 1300 lines of typescript. More, but I don't think it's a mind-blowing difference and I wasn't playing code golf when I wrote it. I wouldn't have used redux if I was! https://github.com/ceuk/planning-poker

Oh cool, very interesting approach! Did a quick test, since before this I also used some very ad-heavy p2p solution, and I see similar issues there. Not sure if you're looking for feedback, but these were all issues I considered before settling on a server-based HTMX long-interrupted-polling approach, which if you think about having server + client + realtime-ish features in the context of "just htmx" + tiny LoC is p…

Yeah I set out to build something with WebRTC rather than to build a planning poker app if that makes sense. Just wanted to test out the tech.

Having said that, I do still use this off and on and personally the limitations don't bug me too much. Would be a nightmare for more mission-critical software though

Re: Please just try HTMX

#489

Post by yawaramin » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 4:28 AM UTC

littlecranky67 wrote: post #477

yawaramin wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps Firefox should focus on shipping a good native datepicker instead of trying to put AI in the browser.

True, but completely unrelated to the original thread and issue at hand.

This should be the issue at hand. Browsers shipping unfinished, sub-standard UI widgets should be a bigger concern for everybody than the random Joe Framework of the week not re-implementing the same widgets.

Re: Please just try HTMX

#490

Post by JohnMunsch » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 4:36 AM UTC

False dichotomy. Your only options aren't HTMX or React/Vue/Svelte when web standards like custom elements have been here for years, are smaller, faster, and work with all your browsers (including the ones on your phone).