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Dependency management fatigue, or why I ditched React for Go+HTMX+Templ

After getting to work on some personal projects using Go+HTMX+Templ this year, I have decided to give up on using React on any personal projects. You can actually find a lot of compelling arguments for ditching React in favor of HTMX in the essays found in the HTMX official website. But I feel that not that many people are speaking about dependency management fatigue. What is dependency management fatigue? After working on my last personal project that used React (an interactive Catalan dictionary), I realized that I was spending too much time dealing with dependency updates of mostly React packages. I would update my packages to their latest release, only to realize that their APIs had breaking changes that forced me to invest time refactoring my code.

I would update my packages to their latest release, only to realize that their APIs had breaking changes that forced me to invest time refactoring my code. Some of the worst offenders in this respect were wouter(a React router package) and TanStackQuery(which I was using to fetch, cache and manage state from the backend). This is maybe just anecdotal evidence, but the Go projects I’ve worked on let me focus on shipping features, while not ignoring general dependency/security updates.

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