HTMX Creator Carson Gross on Comp Sci's Evolution

April 1, 2026·1 hr 28 min·2 clips

Carson Gross says HTMX 4 changes "implicit attribute inheritance" to "explicit attribute inheritance" with `hx-target: inherited`.

1. Software Unscripted talks with Carson Gross about HTMX 4, HTMX 2, and the jump from XHR to fetch, while Richard Feldman frames the episode around backwards compatibility and upgrade pain. 2. Gross is the creator of HTMX, and Feldman hosts Software Unscripted; Gross also mentions Alex as another core HTMX contributor and references his teaching at Montana State. 3. The episode argues that HTMX 4 exists because async and fetch changed the implementation constraints, even though Gross had publicly said there would be no HTMX 3. 4. Gross says HTMX 2 stayed on XHR because XHR still has upload events that fetch lacks, and because he wanted the library to avoid churn like the JavaScript ecosystem. 5. He describes writing `fixie.js` as a minimalist HTTP-and-swap experiment that taught him more about fetch and async, which then pushed him toward another major release. 6. The main user-facing design shift is from implicit attribute inheritance to explicit attribute inheritance, with `hx-target: inherited` marking when descendants should inherit behavior. 7. Gross explains that he first thought inheritance was a mistake, but users told him they liked it, and he now thinks explicit inheritance improves locality and maintenance. 8. He also says most HTMX users should be able to upgrade to HTMX 4 in a couple lines, and that configuration options can flip some behaviors back to the old way. 9. The teaching discussion turns to his Montana State systems programming class, where he says the hardware course changed the most because his own understanding changed after years of teaching. 10. People who care about front-end compatibility, HTMX, and teaching.

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Carson Gross ties HTMX's rise to changing web assumptions and the pressure AI puts on software education.

Software Unscripted places Carson Gross's case for HTMX in a broader story about how web development keeps revising its assumptions. The episode presents HTMX as a lean, hypermedia-minded front-end library, closer to an older AJAX style than to the heavier single-page…

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You want to understand why HTMX found its moment after the SPA era - and what AI is doing to coding class.

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