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Join me while I learn HTMX and talk at you about it
Twitter: @htmxlabs
So what is the howl stack? Howl first of all, if you're anything like me, whenever you hear that there's a new stack, I kind of I just don't I tune it out. I just don't care anymore. There's so many stacks. People have their own cool stacks.
Lazarus:Very cool. It's this does this and this. It's the best stack ever. And I just am thinking, oh, no. Not another acronym stack.
Lazarus:Now I have to learn what all those letters mean. I have to learn the tech behind all those letters. How many of those could there be? There's so many already. Do we really need another one?
Lazarus:So this is actually the opposite of all that. It's the howl stack is essentially it's a joke. It's the anti stack. It stands for hypertext or hypermedia on whatever you'd like. So whatever you'd like, you can use the hyper hypermedia on whatever your preference is, whatever your other stack is.
Lazarus:That's the howl stack. And this comes from a tweet. This, so I put out a request, you know, if people aren't what do people want to hear about? This comes from a tweet from Ricardo. Hypertext on whatever you like.
Lazarus:Knowing what I know now would want to be advised on learning multiple frameworks where they truly shine in real world cases, etcetera. No lock in, just pure right tool for the job. So first of all, what does hypertext on whatever you like mean? What does the house stack mean? There's an essay by Carson Gross who created HTMX on what it really means.
Lazarus:These essays are fantastic. They are a breath of fresh air. Just about just talking about tech in general and about the bigger picture. So I highly recommend, you to to read that and check that out. It's in the show notes and he describes it, you know, I'm sure better than I will.
Lazarus:But what does it mean to me? It means to me that all your frameworks are just fancy ways to produce HTML. Right? So in the end everything is becoming HTML whether you're using react Laravel blade, Django, go, rust, Python. If you're creating web stuff, in the end, it all gets spit out to process and spit out to your browser as HTML.
Lazarus:Some of it much more readable HTML than others. React and HTMLX operates at that level, the outermost layer where the HTML is. So it does not care. It's truly agnostic as to what tools you used to generate that HTML. Maybe you didn't use any tools.
Lazarus:Maybe you just type the HTML into notepad or whatever your your, IDE is. So it does not care. It's operating on that outermost HTML hyper media layer, the outermost layer. And what that means? So what does that mean?
Lazarus:To some people, that might mean you can use any framework you want, whichever is the right framework for this particular project or this job. And I think that's what Ricardo is getting at, when he says, you know, no lock in, just the pure right tool for the job. And I think that's to that's true. You can go and you can choose whatever the correct tool, whatever is the exact, you know, most efficient way to do this with your particular use case, you can use that language, and that's great. But I think there's another meaning of that, which is for other people it might mean I'm sick of learning new frameworks.
Lazarus:I just want to be good at one framework. I just want to learn one thing, and I want to be able to do all this kind of stuff that you can do with HTMX, and you can do with other front end library stuff and and other Ajax based systems. But I want to be able to do all that, but I don't want to have to learn a new framework. That's good too. You don't have to learn a bunch of frameworks.
Lazarus:That's why it's hypermedia on whatever you like. If you want to just dig into something, that's fine. We, you know, we all have different jobs, different hobbies, different clients, different bosses, different requirements, and just our own personal preferences. And that to me is what the howl stack, the idea of the howl stack is all about. Hypertext on whatever you like.
Lazarus:I keep forgetting if it's hypertext or hypermedia, but it's something hyper for sure. And you know, for me that is Laravel. So I, and particularly Livewire, I think Laravel is just for PHP is just it's an insane ecosystem. And I've really gotten a lot of benefits from going deep on a single tool. And sometimes, you know, as long as it's a good tool, as long as it has a lot, which, you know, the Laravel ecosystem is great.
Lazarus:It's like, at this point, I can code Laravel apps in my sleep. I can close my eyes. I can see the whole app from start to finish. I do all the different parts so many times now that everything is just easy. And that to me is just a huge benefit in my career.
Lazarus:I can build things so much faster than earlier in my career when I was switching between different things. I can still work on a Python or Ruby app or something else if I have to, but it's just going to take me 5 times as long to figure out where all the files are and some trial and error. I'm going to make some obvious rookie mistakes because I'm just not used to it, and that's not the framework's fault. You know, a lot of times, some of these well, not one is better than the other. It's just the cost benefit of specialization.
Lazarus:You can do certain things really fast, and you try and do new stuff, and it can be harder. And there's other people who just love the excitement and the challenge of learning the new frameworks, or they're still at the phase where they want to try everything before they settle in and find their favorite one, and they can mix and match however they want. And then on that outer layer of their HTML, that's where you have your HTML anyway. So you can change all your underlying tech, all your different preferences. You can find the one that you want to use.
Lazarus:So I don't know if it's worth. I don't know if it's worth for me going through trying to figure out each framework specialty. I think if you're the type of programmer who wants to do that, this is a great opportunity to do that. I might be wrong too if I tried to guess at what each framework specialty is, and there's like a ton of debates on this and that, and, you know, you might save a couple milliseconds with go, or you might have a 1,000,000,000 options with Laravel, and, you know, do you want to use the sockets and all this kind of stuff? So that's a big discussion, but I think the concept of the howl stack is more about giving you the freedom to be the type of developer that you want to be.
Lazarus:If you want to do deep dives in one language, you can do it. If you want to be a, you know, languages, a polyglot, just trying everything and try every framework under the sun, and you can put them all on your resume, which is great. Just have a long list of every single framework and tech stack. As long as you have access to that outer layer, and you know how to copy and paste a CDN up at the top of your file, then you have the complete h t m x toolbox at your disposal.