Lol yes this is what I am trying to run away from ironically! Forget Elm and HTMX for a second: I would like to use Django because it should be boring tech to get the job done. HTMX allows you to have interaction without JS using HTML-like primitives. I would just learn what I need. Elm is something I used before but not really needed! More of an indulgence. Vanilla JS will do though. No need for Elm or React for side projects.

I am trying to avoid the nextjs/react/ etc stuff where I spend half my time on tooling issues. JS itself is nightmarish (people complain about python dependencies but I haven’t yet seen a big issue yet) but node JS weird module errors and myriad places things are configured and that you usually have build steps etc. Makes me want to get away from that.

You don’t need to “keep up”. You don’t need to know all 100 ways to make a sausage. Just make sausages. Occasionally tweak the machine.