> Every endpoint returns 3–5 different HTML fragments. Frontend and backend must agree on every scenario — success, validation errors, system errors, partial updates, full reloads.

And why would that differ from React?

When I was building a website with React, I needed to model a "apply coupon" endpoint with different states (coupon applied, coupon does not exist, coupon exists but has reached its max usage limit) and it was so annoying because you needed to

1. The backend route that returns JSON with a different model depending on the coupon state

2. The JSON models for each response type

3. And then on the frontend you need to load the data, parse the JSON, figure out which "response state" it is (http status code? having a "type" field on the JSON?) convert the JSON to HTML and then display it to the user

In my experience it added a lot of extra "mental overhead". It is something that should be extremely simple that ends up being unnecessarily complex, especially when you need to do that for any new feature you want to add.

When using htmx, a simple implementation of that would be

1. A backend route that returns HTML depending on the coupon state

2. Some htmx attributes (hx-post, hx-swap) on the frontend to make the magic happen

Don't get me wrong, there are places that you wouldn't want to use htmx (heavily interactive components) but that's why htmx recommends the "islands of interactivity" pattern. This way you can make the boring things that would add unnecessary complexity when using React with htmx, and then you can spend the unused "mental overhead" with the interactive components. (which, IMO, makes it a more enjoyable experience)

At the end of the day it is just choices: Some people may prefer the React approach, some people may prefer the htmx approach. All of them have their own upsides and downsides and there isn't a real answer to which is better.

But for my use case, htmx (truth to be told: I use my own custom library that's heavily inspired by htmx on my website, but everything that I did could be done with htmx + some htmx extensions) worked wonderfully for me, and I don't plan on "ripping it all out" anytime soon.