[pkelly]

Thank you for writing this article! I've had similar thoughts for the past 5 years or so.

A lot of the comments here seem to have the approach that there is a single best stack for building web applications. I believe this comes from the fact that as web engineers we have to choose which tech to invest our careers in which is inherently risky. Spend a couples years on something that becomes defunct and it feels like a waste. Also, startup recruiters are always looking for the tech experience that matches the choice of their companies. VCs want to strike while the iron is hot.

Something that doesn't get talked about enough (which the author does mention near the end of article) is that different web apps have different needs. There is 100% a need for SPAs for certain use cases. Messaging, video players, etc. But there are many cases where it is overkill, like the many many CRUD resource apps I've built over the years. Say you have a couple hundred users that need to manage the state of a dozen interconnected resources. The benefits of an MPA are great here. Routing is free, no duplication of FE / BE code. Small teams of devs can ship code and fix bugs very fast which keeps the user feedback loop tight.

[quii]

Thanks for taking the time to read the article :) A lot of the comments here seem to implying that I claim "htmx is the one hammer to solve all website needs", even when I explicitly say SPAs have their place in the article.

A hypermedia approach is the nice happy medium between a very static website and an SPA, not sure why so many people are close-minded about this possibility.