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!
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.
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.
When I was running a small dev agency with a sprinkling of web projects, Angular was useful because it every project looked more or less the same. The rigidity (and verbosity) it imposed was an advantage in this setting, as it helped with the cognitive load when switching between projects. Apart from that, I wasn’t a fan either.
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?
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.
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...
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 mean it just seems like even in the agentic era, you should know when to use the right tool for the right job. The site shown seems perfect for htmx style websites, so idk why you would use an SPA. Still very cool experiment, appreciate the data and human writing!
> My goal here is not to write the end-all-be-all benchmark for “I’m a vibe-coder, which framework should I choose?” The point of this post is to demonstrate that it’s possible in the era of AI coding to still make decisions based on evidence rather than vibes.
But it’s obvious that the article will be understood as a useful benchmark, so author probably should have addressed that point earlier and more thoroughly.
Taking the authors pov for a moment, they just showed you how to put all your criticisms to work in making a newer better benchmark :)
I have most of my apps in it without much trouble.
One of my recent ones had a very complicated form and state management.
AI really struggled with HTMX in that use case.
Like the form might work but the page would take 30s to load. Or some state would randomly drop or a toggle wouldn't work after changing a dependency.
If I rewrote that in react it would have one shot it without a doubt. Some things are just better models for different problems.
For the record I eventually got enough tests in place to keep the agent honest and the HTMX version is now a lot faster anything I could have got out of react but yeah, it was an adventure.
Solid work, but it would be really cool if we can also test Pokemon motions and how the game responds in real-time. Is an agent able to think about reactions, directional movements and attack patterns of each Pokemon is where the real intelligence test lies.
Traditional languages may have their limitations, but [C++, Rust, JavaScript, TypeScript etc] can still do pretty well.
BatchJob | 2 hours ago
tancop | 2 hours ago
vermilingua | 2 hours ago
truetraveller | an hour ago
skrebbel | an hour ago
usernametaken29 | 2 hours ago
ozim | an hour ago
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.
alex_suzuki | 14 minutes ago
Aozora7 | 11 minutes ago
Not necessarily that Angular would win that, but I imagine that it would at least significantly shuffle the order.
drnick1 | 2 hours ago
r_lee | an hour ago
and what % of users have JS turned off? 0.00001%?
bazoom42 | an hour ago
stephbook | an hour ago
neya | 2 hours ago
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.
iammrpayments | an hour ago
genshii | an hour ago
electroplankton | an hour ago
SwellJoe | an hour ago
shermantanktop | 28 minutes ago
chvid | an hour ago
etatester | 26 minutes ago
mmusc | an hour ago
Server side page generation with a sprinkle of js will give you the same results with GBS less of packages and comple time
andai | an hour ago
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...
Joeri | 38 minutes ago
Plus all the other vanilla advantages: fewer dependencies, lower maintenance, less retraining, etc…
jawngee | an hour ago
andai | an hour ago
iperov | an hour ago
I hope I'll be the last person on Earth writing code by hand.
ArcHound | 49 minutes ago
Culonavirus | 15 minutes ago
borzi | 35 minutes ago
shermantanktop | 29 minutes ago
> My goal here is not to write the end-all-be-all benchmark for “I’m a vibe-coder, which framework should I choose?” The point of this post is to demonstrate that it’s possible in the era of AI coding to still make decisions based on evidence rather than vibes.
But it’s obvious that the article will be understood as a useful benchmark, so author probably should have addressed that point earlier and more thoroughly.
Taking the authors pov for a moment, they just showed you how to put all your criticisms to work in making a newer better benchmark :)
sachahjkl | 27 minutes ago
unsloppable | 23 minutes ago
I have most of my apps in it without much trouble.
One of my recent ones had a very complicated form and state management.
AI really struggled with HTMX in that use case.
Like the form might work but the page would take 30s to load. Or some state would randomly drop or a toggle wouldn't work after changing a dependency.
If I rewrote that in react it would have one shot it without a doubt. Some things are just better models for different problems.
For the record I eventually got enough tests in place to keep the agent honest and the HTMX version is now a lot faster anything I could have got out of react but yeah, it was an adventure.
samayashar | 19 minutes ago
Traditional languages may have their limitations, but [C++, Rust, JavaScript, TypeScript etc] can still do pretty well.