Only backend developers that think frontend is trivial and we’re all just idiots think that HTMX is the solution. They saw it working in their hello world side project and think they discovered gold.
This is why I'm a big advocate of Inertia.js [1]. For me it's the right balance of using "serious" batteries included traditional MVC backends like Laravel, Rails, Adonis, Django, etc... and modern component based frontend tools like React, Vue, Svelte, etc. Responsibilities are clear, working in it is easy, and every single time I used it feels like you're using the right tool for each task.
I can't recommend it enough. If you never tried/learnt about it, check it out. Unless you're building an offline first app, it's 100% the safest way to go in my opinion for 99.9% of projects.
I am also in love with Inertia, it lets you use a React frontend and a Laravel backend without a dedicated API or endpoints, its so much faster to develop and iterate, and you dont need to change your approach or mental model, it just makes total sense.
Instead of creating routes and using fetch() you just pass the data directly to the client side react jsx template, inertia automatically injects the needed data as json into the client page.
I feel very comfortable with Django on the frontend, what are you missing there? I usually use Tailwind or Bulma, with HTMX and AlpineJs. I feel like the experience can be very much React like, even if you leave out HTMX. The frontend game of Django really changed about 2 years ago (at least for me).
Laravel's Blade templates are just absolutely phenomenal. The partial rendering, the integration with Livewire, the first class component paradigm. It's just far beyond stock Django / Jinja at this point and delivers some serious dev experience performance boosts.
Glad to hear that works for you. But nothing of what you are mentioning is part of Django, nor an official package,etc.
And I’m not going to get into the details of whether that stack would work for non backend developers, developers working on medium/large projects and/or medium/large teams. That’s a separate and unrelated discussion.
But compare what Django brings you (Stone Age templating system and that’s it) to what Laravel provides out of the box (or via official packages) like assets bundling, live reloading, an amazing and modern template system with proper “component like” partials or even if you need them, the “big guns” such as Inertia or Livewire. More or less the same is true for Rails with the Hotwire stuff.
There’s absolutely no point of comparison here. Even if that works for you, Django is not even in the same league.
It is still a great backend framework though, which was my point.
That is… I wouldn’t even think about using it because it’s very likely they will change their mind next year and come up with something totally different. Again.
These guys are really, really obsessed with download counts. They brag a lot about that in twitter every time they have a chance.
What they want to reuse is the package name.
So now they launch whatever bullshit they are playing with now under the “remix” package and the next day they’ll say “look… we have N thousands downloads per second!!! We are so successful”
They did this multiple times. And will keep doing it because they are obsessed with this.
I just can’t stand the excessive dynamism of Ruby. I understand some people prefer/enjoy it, it’s just not for me.