Tbh, at this point in time my first instinctive response is more or less "ugh, another web framework?". I am sure this is a great framework that does what it sets out to do. But commenting this on...
Tbh, at this point in time my first instinctive response is more or less "ugh, another web framework?". I am sure this is a great framework that does what it sets out to do.
But commenting this on Tildes, a website fully functional in 2025 using "ancient" technologies like server side rendering, jQuery and plain css, really makes me sceptical in this regard.
I honestly feel that web development (certainly front end) has been abstracted to hell so much that people have lost sight of the underlying technologies. To the point that I see so many projects using complex scaffolding that absolutely don't need all that overhead.
This blog post has some tell tale signs of this. Apparently "events" isn't hip anymore, so we call them signals. Simplicity apparently means that a framework needs to so ALL THE THINGS (okay...). The author hates javascript... Doesn't really go into detail why. In my experience people that hate javascript are often stuck in 2015 before a lot of modern features have been introduced or they haven't really tried to work with it.
Even with "simple" static websites I see this behaviour. Where people think they need generators, templating and what not. Which yeah, can be nice if you want to write your content in markdown or some other format. But, to get started you can still simply create html pages, upload them to a simple shared webhost and have a very functional acceptable website.
/Rant
Edit: To be clear, I realize that hypermedia brings back the focus to html and server side rendering. But, also in a way that it is again abstracted away. A lot of these frameworks really strike me as solutions searching for a problem. I might also just be getting old and grumpy, who knows...
Edit2: Maybe a tiny bit old and grumpy, the "bring your own back end" deal described on the framework site itself is actually a nice touch.
Not to diminish your point or anything, but Tildes actually uses Intercooler.js which is the predecessor to HTMX. So in a way it uses this same style of web development already. :D But I do also...
But commenting this on Tildes, a website fully functional in 2025 using "ancient" technologies like server side rendering, jQuery and plain css, really makes me sceptical in this regard.
Not to diminish your point or anything, but Tildes actually uses Intercooler.js which is the predecessor to HTMX. So in a way it uses this same style of web development already. :D
But I do also agree with you, Datastar needs a whole SDK to make its magic happen. At least with HTMX you can just plop in HTML from whatever route. I think a middle ground could exist between these two that requires no server magic like Datastar and is simpler than HTMX.
I personally really like the idea of keeping everything on the server and rendering the HTML in fragments but I've also tried a few things with HTMX and it's certainly not as easy and simple as it could be.
Huh, could have sworn that at some point this page just listed jQuery. That wiki page also explains where I am coming from in much more detail and from a more grounded perspective. Anyway, the...
Tildes actually uses Intercooler.js which is the predecessor to HTMX.
Huh, could have sworn that at some point this page just listed jQuery. That wiki page also explains where I am coming from in much more detail and from a more grounded perspective.
Anyway, the premise of HTMX is fairly reasonable and certainly nice for various use cases. But, it is still an abstraction that is not a necessity to make a basic functional website. I still think we have too many damn frameworks, certainly the state of front-end is this xkcd running amok, but datastar does seem to approach things from a fairly reasonable perspective. Still overkill for most people unless they just want to play around with a new framework. Which is half of the problem, but I digress.
I mentioned Tildes as it is a showcase that you can have website in the modern day and age without having all sorts of abstractions tacked on abstraction on to abstractions.
My rant is, in hindsight, more aimed at the blog author. How they approach the subject and the context they frame this entire thing in.
Definitely agree on that. Simpler ways are possible and the fewer constantly updating parts in the stack the better, in my opinion.
I mentioned Tildes as it is a showcase that you can have website in the modern day and age without having all sorts of abstractions tacked on abstraction on to abstractions.
Definitely agree on that. Simpler ways are possible and the fewer constantly updating parts in the stack the better, in my opinion.
I find this article a nice introduction to this framework, it’s quite approachable to people who understand only the basics. I am interested in simple hypermedia libraries, and have been building...
I find this article a nice introduction to this framework, it’s quite approachable to people who understand only the basics. I am interested in simple hypermedia libraries, and have been building simple features with HTMX, so this is nice to get some comparison with it too.
Tbh, at this point in time my first instinctive response is more or less "ugh, another web framework?". I am sure this is a great framework that does what it sets out to do.
But commenting this on Tildes, a website fully functional in 2025 using "ancient" technologies like server side rendering, jQuery and plain css, really makes me sceptical in this regard.
I honestly feel that web development (certainly front end) has been abstracted to hell so much that people have lost sight of the underlying technologies. To the point that I see so many projects using complex scaffolding that absolutely don't need all that overhead.
This blog post has some tell tale signs of this. Apparently "events" isn't hip anymore, so we call them signals. Simplicity apparently means that a framework needs to so ALL THE THINGS (okay...). The author hates javascript... Doesn't really go into detail why. In my experience people that hate javascript are often stuck in 2015 before a lot of modern features have been introduced or they haven't really tried to work with it.
Even with "simple" static websites I see this behaviour. Where people think they need generators, templating and what not. Which yeah, can be nice if you want to write your content in markdown or some other format. But, to get started you can still simply create html pages, upload them to a simple shared webhost and have a very functional acceptable website.
/Rant
Edit: To be clear, I realize that hypermedia brings back the focus to html and server side rendering. But, also in a way that it is again abstracted away. A lot of these frameworks really strike me as solutions searching for a problem. I might also just be getting old and grumpy, who knows...
Edit2: Maybe a tiny bit old and grumpy, the "bring your own back end" deal described on the framework site itself is actually a nice touch.
Not to diminish your point or anything, but Tildes actually uses Intercooler.js which is the predecessor to HTMX. So in a way it uses this same style of web development already. :D
But I do also agree with you, Datastar needs a whole SDK to make its magic happen. At least with HTMX you can just plop in HTML from whatever route. I think a middle ground could exist between these two that requires no server magic like Datastar and is simpler than HTMX.
I personally really like the idea of keeping everything on the server and rendering the HTML in fragments but I've also tried a few things with HTMX and it's certainly not as easy and simple as it could be.
Huh, could have sworn that at some point this page just listed jQuery. That wiki page also explains where I am coming from in much more detail and from a more grounded perspective.
Anyway, the premise of HTMX is fairly reasonable and certainly nice for various use cases. But, it is still an abstraction that is not a necessity to make a basic functional website. I still think we have too many damn frameworks, certainly the state of front-end is this xkcd running amok, but datastar does seem to approach things from a fairly reasonable perspective. Still overkill for most people unless they just want to play around with a new framework. Which is half of the problem, but I digress.
I mentioned Tildes as it is a showcase that you can have website in the modern day and age without having all sorts of abstractions tacked on abstraction on to abstractions.
My rant is, in hindsight, more aimed at the blog author. How they approach the subject and the context they frame this entire thing in.
Definitely agree on that. Simpler ways are possible and the fewer constantly updating parts in the stack the better, in my opinion.
I find this article a nice introduction to this framework, it’s quite approachable to people who understand only the basics. I am interested in simple hypermedia libraries, and have been building simple features with HTMX, so this is nice to get some comparison with it too.