Comment by listenallyall

24 days ago

Yes, if your server is a weak, limited processor, you want to keep the demands on it as low and lean as possible, and let the client do the heavy lifting. HTMX is not a good fit for this scenario, just like PostgreSQL is not a good database to embed on your devices.

This isn't a controversial idea and nobody would try to sell you on HTMX for your use case.

1. No, templating strings is actually quite cheap. I'm doubtful that you could benchmark any substantial difference between templating html and serializing json.

2. Who has a server with a weak, limited processor? HTML templates power Django, Rails, and PHP. This paradigm worked fine on the servers of 20 years ago, in the slowest languages we use. I could serve a Django app on my phone and see reasonable performance.

  • I agree that templating is very fast and efficient, probably faster than serializing to JSON.

    Read the OP's posts - he is talking about a "server" being an embedded device with 64mb of read-only storage. My assumption is that the data output format is basically hard-coded in the device's OS and doesn't even rely on JSON serialization.

    • Oh wait, oh my god

      > Three levels down and people have entirely forgotten what my post was.

      I missed this reply entirely. Whoops.

      That said, I do feel like you can do HTML templates on a tiny chip with 64 megs of memory. I've seen NASes with comparably tiny & terrible chips serve their web UIs this way: paper-thin html templates with <form>s for interactivity and <table>s for layout.

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