The AI cost of JavaScript frameworks (nolanlawson.com)

54 pointsby luu3 hours ago25 comments

neya an hour ago

This benchmark is too simplified to be meaningful. The choice of a framework is rarely based on speed alone, it factors in other elements like the user's domain knowledge, long term maintainability and the framework's track record itself w.r.t security and development of features.

In this regard alone, it will make a lot of sense to spend extra $2 and 2 mins to trade off for a long-term maintainable codebase and code you can reason about than just something made quickly just to get it deployed fast.

In my personal use case, that would be Svelte 5 for me and I'm sure it will be something else for everyone.

tancop 2 hours ago

Astro comes out on top with the best time, #2 lowest spend and zero client side JS. I know what I'm using for my next project.

vermilingua 2 hours ago

Can confirm Astro is very very pleasant to use, and the escape hatches for when you do need something a bit more heavy hitting feel very well designed.

truetraveller an hour ago

next project? pun of the year?

skrebbel 37 minutes ago

It scores well here because Astro is for “content-driven websites” and that’s what the benchmark app was. I’d be curious how different the results would be if the app was highly interactive, with nontrivial realtime/async stuff going on etc.

mmusc 33 minutes ago

Java script frameworks are just extra boiler plate that isn't needed in the age of ai-coding.

Server side page generation with a sprinkle of js will give you the same results with GBS less of packages and comple time

andai 30 minutes ago

I'm reading that agents can now mash up video games that were written in assembly. At that point I have to wonder if the abstractions are adding anything.

Of course, there is the question of "the human can still understand what is going on", but it's not clear the new frameworks are optimizing for that...

usernametaken29 2 hours ago

Angular sucks, I always knew it, and now we have some data that it’s broken even for agents. I’m not surprised

ozim 32 minutes ago

> The Pokémon app is small and doesn’t represent a large, complex real-world application.

If you aim to make small apps that don’t represent complex real-world applications you should not use Angular.

But blanket statements like yours are what I hate the most in software industry.

iperov 23 minutes ago

> in the agentic era, when developers are no longer typing code by hand

I hope I'll be the last person on Earth writing code by hand.

ArcHound 6 minutes ago

Neocities ride hard on the old-internet hand-crafted HTML aesthetic. Maybe we could start a similar club?

andai 23 minutes ago

Interesting article. Kind of seems like you'd want a more complex task, there's not much differentiation here.

jawngee 25 minutes ago

Nice to see Nuxt holding its own. Astro or Nuxt are my gotos for client work and personal projects.

iammrpayments an hour ago

Interesting, I’m just sad svelte didnt behave better because of the LLM reading migration guide on every answer

chvid 43 minutes ago

It is fairly obvious that it is all going to be some kind of React/JSX with tailwind.

genshii an hour ago

Glad to see Astro doing well here. It's by far my favorite way to build sites of all kinds, both content rich MPAs, and react heavy web apps.

electroplankton an hour ago

where is jquery? :(

SwellJoe 20 minutes ago

On 64% of websites.

drnick1 an hour ago

Just use plain HTML for God's sake. HN demonstrates very well that you can do plenty without some Javascript monstrosity. At the very least, make your your websites degrades gracefully when JS is turned off.

r_lee an hour ago

"do plenty" or just use React for everything and have a single thing where you don't need to worry about the limitations or having to remake the same stuff the framework provides?

and what % of users have JS turned off? 0.00001%?

bazoom42 an hour ago

HN uses JavaScript though, not just plain HTML.

stephbook 20 minutes ago

And it certainly doesn't do "plenty."

BatchJob 2 hours ago

Unfortunately the author is not only correct about front end development vibes, but due to this state of affairs, I ceased to recognize browser based UIs as being software development at all. Too much browser tech is broken to call it software. As for agents, good for them!