htmx VS fresh

Recently, I just rewrite one of my application Stashbin from Next.js to GO. Though my main motivation of this migration was to learn GO and experimenting with HTMX. I also aiming to reduce the resource usage of my application and simplify the deployment process. Initially, Stashbin codebase are split into two seperate repository, one for the frontend that uses Next.js and another for the backend that already uses GO. The backend repository is just a REST API responsible for storing and retreiving data from the database.

HTMX is another library that gained popularity due to its server-first approach to rendering data, although seeking a much simpler way of appealing to developers.

When I work with HTMX I need isolated component that can be reusable a form. So I create a PHP Function that generate the Input Datalist.

I was inspired by htmz (which was in turn inspired by htmx) and how the author got pretty close to a basic htmx-like experience just using an iframe. I wanted to push it a little further so whipped this demo together. My submission demonstrates progressive enhancement for the form - with js enabled the request targets an iframe that is inserted into the dom, meaning the page doesn't actually navigate (similar to event.preventDefault()). The iframe receives the html response from the request and on load triggers a function to swap out it's contents into the main page.

As described on htmx.org: "htmx gives you access to AJAX, CSS Transitions, WebSockets and Server Sent Events directly in HTML, using attributes, so you can build modern user interfaces with the simplicity and power of hypertext"

Apart from the source code itself, the repo's README also gives a bit more details about the various packages I used.

1. htmx: https://htmx.org/

Also, there’s some response header juggling you have to do when submitting forms that have a validation step before redirecting: https://github.com/bigskysoftware/htmx/issues/369

I’ve tried to iron out any footguns or server requirements I’ve bumped into while using HTMX & Hotwire in my projects.

✨ In recent months, I have been developing web projects using GOTTHA stack: Go + Templ + Tailwind CSS + htmx + Alpine.js. As soon as I'm ready to talk about all the subtleties and pitfalls, I'll post it on my social networks.

I've been digging into HTMX lately (using Python web frameworks) and find the concepts and approach to be interesting and promising. The idea of hypermedia driven systems over the current practice of JavaScript based frameworks (I never really got into React, played with Vue, and enjoy Svelte/SvelteKit) and the ability to chose your language/framework for the backend while primarily leveraging HTML/CSS on the frontend just seems refreshing.

Deno: Deno with one of it's frameworks (like Fresh

The road to Fresh 2.0 (https://github.com/denoland/fresh/issues/2363) by Marvin Hagemeister Can't wait for seeing the end of the road! All in all great changes ahead.

Because I have secret magical powers that you probably don't, it's basically free for me. Here's the breakdown though:

The application server uses Deno and Fresh (https://fresh.deno.dev) and requires a shared-1x CPU at 512 MB of ram. That's $3.19 per month as-is. It also uses 2GB of disk volume, which would cost $0.30 per month.

As far as post generation goes: when I first set it up it used GPT-3.5 Turbo to generate prose. That cost me rounding error per month (maybe like $0.05?). At some point I upgraded it to GPT-4 Turbo for free-because-I-got-OpenAI-credits-on-the-drama-day reasons. The prose level increase wasn't significant.

With the GPU it has now, a cold load of the model and prose generation run takes about 1.5 minutes. If I didn't have reasons to keep that machine pinned to a GPU (involving other ridiculous ventures), it would probably cost about 5 minutes per day (increased the time to make the math easier) of GPU time with a 40 GB volume (I now use Nous Hermes Mixtral at Q5_K_M precision, so about 32 GB of weights), so something like $6 per month for the volume and 2.5 hours of GPU time, or about $6.25 per month on an L40s.

In total it's probably something like $15.75 per month. That's a fair bit on paper, but I have certain arrangements that make it significantly less cheap for me. I could re-architect Arsène to not have to be online 24/7, but it's frankly not worth it when the big cost is the GPU time and weights volume. I don't know of a way to make that better without sacrificing model quality more than I have to.

For a shitpost though, I think it'd totally worth it to pay that much. It's kinda hilarious and I feel like it makes for a decent display of how bad things could get if we go full "AI replaces writers" like some people seem to want for some reason I can't even begin to understand.

I still think it's funny that I have to explicitly tell people to not take financial advice from it, because if I didn't then they will.

Deno has also created a Next.js competitor, Fresh. I found it a few weeks ago and am starting to go through the docs, looks like a good overall concept. https://fresh.deno.dev/

https://fresh.deno.dev/ - Fresh embraces the tried and true design of server side rendering and progressive enhancement on the client side.

Along the way, I not only got the oppurtunity to revise old concepts that had blurred in my memory, but also learnt about new technologies like Fresh.js, a framework from Deno (a js runtime engine) that uses Preact, a React Routing library and used Chakra UI for the first time.

A whole project might be released as a server or framework. Frameworks like fresh, and astro) both have had things deep within them that I've wanted to reuse, within fresh it's the esbuild configuration, and islands functionality, and within astro it's the rendering of astro files themselves.

The Fresh framework by Deno cited an improved developer experience due to tighter feedback loops.