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.
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.
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.
The vanilla advantage is also there in a pure client-side pwa. Arguably it’s even bigger, because the bundle size ends up way smaller and the agent needs to hold less in context.
Plus all the other vanilla advantages: fewer dependencies, lower maintenance, less retraining, etc…
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...
I mean maybe I'm too grumpy, but never in my life did I think I'd have to fight against a strong contingent of people who really don't see the value of abstraction. Taking crazy pills must feel like this.
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!
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.
"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?
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.
Server side page generation with a sprinkle of js will give you the same results with GBS less of packages and comple time
Plus all the other vanilla advantages: fewer dependencies, lower maintenance, less retraining, etc…
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...
I hope I'll be the last person on Earth writing code by hand.
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.
and what % of users have JS turned off? 0.00001%?