The CEO of htmx likes codin' dirty (Interview)

The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

Jerod is joined by Carson Gross, the creator of htmx –a small, zero-dependency JavaScript library that he says, “completes HTML as a hypertext”. Carson built it because he’s big on hypermedia, he even wrote a book called Hypermedia Systems. Carson has a lot of strong opinions weakly held that we dive into in this conversation.

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members save 6 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Retool – Assemble your elite AI team, arm them with powerful custom tools, and watch them make your to-do list disappear. Start for free or book a demo at retool.com/agents
• Depot – 10x faster builds? Yes please. Build faster. Waste less time. Accelerate Docker image builds, and GitHub Actions workflows. Easily integrate with your existing CI provider and dev workflows to save hours of build time.
• Outshift by Cisco – AGNTCY is an open source collective building the Internet of Agents. It’s a collaboration layer where AI agents can communicate, discover each other, and work across frameworks. For developers, this means standardized agent discovery tools, seamless protocols for inter-agent communication, and modular components to compose and scale multi-agent workflows.

Featuring:

• Carson Gross – GitHub, X
• Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• htmx - high power tools for html
• Why Gumroad Didn’t Choose htmx
• Codin’ Dirty
• Vendoring
• Hypermedia Systems

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

פרקים

1. This week on The Changelog (00:00:00)

2. Sponsor: Retool (00:01:17)

https://retool.com/agents

3. Start the show! (00:03:16)

4. Getting htmx attention (00:04:15)

5. Viewpoint origins (00:09:08)

6. Hypermedia distilled (00:12:39)

7. Why html lacks (00:14:57)

8. What htmx adds (00:18:49)

9. Echoes of jQuery (00:23:27)

10. Sponsor: Depot (00:29:29)

https://depot.dev

11. Gumroad didn't choose htmx (00:31:38)

12. Making money (00:38:40)

13. Codin' dirty (00:43:31)

https://htmx.org/essays/codin-dirty/

14. Big functions (00:48:37)

15. Types of tests (00:51:56)

16. If/else over polymorphism (01:02:38)

17. Pattern matching (01:04:48)

18. Sponsor: Outshift by Cisco (01:07:53)

https://agntcy.org

19. Vendoring (01:08:58)

https://htmx.org/essays/vendoring/

20. Big opportunity (01:12:13)

21. htmx 2.0 (01:18:04)

22. Connecting with Carson (01:20:31)

23. Closing thoughts (01:21:37)