React is Overkill: Why Python + HTMX is Dominating in 2026

Last year I spent forty minutes setting up a React project for an internal admin dashboard. Just the boilerplate. Vite config, ESLint setup, Tailwind integration, React Router, TanStack Query because someone on Twitter said it was the right way to handle server state now. I hadn't written a single line of actual application logic yet and I already had twelve files open. The dashboard needed to list records from a database, let you filter them, and update a status field. Three things. That's it....