[silver-arrow]

I see bnert gave a very good answer to your question in a reply. So to echo what bnert said, as far as the java template frameworks like jsp and thymeleaf, htmx is complementary to them. Here is a good scenario in this blog post by someone. https://www.wimdeblauwe.com/blog/2021/10/04/todomvc-with-thy...

Also like bnert, when using Clojure we prefer to use a library on the server-side called hiccup to generate HTML from Clojure data structures instead of a template library. Either way, template engine or hiccup HTML generation, the principle is the same. You are coding everything on the server-side and rendering HTML back to the browser - something it is VERY good at rendering. :) As part of that HTML rendering, you are putting attributes on some HTML elements that htmx understands from the browser side.

ClojureScript is a totally different concept, as it basically allows a Clojure developer to write JavaScript in Clojure - it generates JS. With the server-side rendering model above, we still code 100% in Clojure, but we get to jettison a lot of the complexity of the ClojureScript model (Reagent etc), and development set-up. It is far simpler.

Other benefits of the hypermedia approach provided by htmx: 1. It is obviously true HATEAOS, so we don't worry about end-point versioning issues. 2. The barriers of the UI team and Server team negotiating and re-negotiating end-points is gone. We have all transitioned to "full stack developers" - sanely. 3. As mentioned above, it is language and server-side agnostic, so use what you prefer and have competitive advantage with using. 4. Simpler mental model. The team thinks in hypermedia terms from a server rendering perspective only. That lets you wrap your brain more easily around the business problems. 5. You have the full power and capability of your database at your disposal instead of going through and desigining the correct endpoints to get there first.

Hope that made sense

[sandGorgon]

hey thanks so much for the explanation. so my question about cljscript and thymeleaf vs htmx was because they all do the same thing. im totally sold on the server side aspect of the whole thing...and especially the "full stack developers" aspect.

what im not sold on is HTMX specifically. im kind of wondering things like "hey what if we just used alpine.js with JSP or thymeleaf and skip htmx entirely", etc

what im getting incrementally with htmx is a bit unclear...while staying in the server side rendering of things.

[bnert]

Thanks for calling out some gaps in my explanation! Appreciate your perspective :)