from Hacker News

Hyper – Outperform React on every metric

by ZephyrBlu on 5/6/25, 7:14 AM with 38 comments

  • by cryptos on 5/6/25, 8:40 AM

    What is the advantage over Svelte (https://svelte.dev/)? Especially since Svelte is already established and has an ecosystem.
  • by lucideer on 5/6/25, 8:40 AM

    This is a bizarrely written article - as a frontend dev it left me wondering who the target audience is. Is it so-called "vibe coders"?

    The language throughout is "dumbed down" as if written for a recruiter or non-technical founder who's only heard of "react" as a buzzword:

    > Hyper is the language (think React, but simpler)

    React isn't a language. JSX is a language, but still doesn't compare well to a full DSL like Hyper. Svelte would be a more sensible comparison here (but given your chosen metrics I suspect it wouldn't make Hyper look as good).

    The title seems deliberately misleading - I see nothing about performance in the piece. You seem to be using the word "perform" to mean "hits some arbitrary metrics we selected", like cloc of your own app (no mention of cloc of the node_modules folder).

    The comparisons are also nonsense. The first React "modern version" is comparing Hyper to ShadCN, not React itself. The only extra "boilerplate" is the import loading in ShadCN as a dependency.

    Seriously what is going on here? Who is this for?

    Hyper may be a great project but this piece is so devoid of content or analyses that I really can't tell.

  • by titaphraz on 5/6/25, 8:46 AM

    That's simple. It's so simple that it uses the word simple 12 times in that simple short text. That must be very simple. Simple as that! I like simple stuff.
  • by iamsaitam on 5/6/25, 8:33 AM

    This reminds me of the class (and classic) adage of inheritance, where you wanted a banana but you got a gorilla holding a banana standing on an island. If you want to compare frameworks, compare frameworks not your framework vs another framework and the whole ecosystem.
  • by lucsky on 5/6/25, 8:36 AM

    The author of this article and framework either doesn't have the slightest beginning of a clue how React works or is just being extremely dishonest. I'm all for alternative and new ideas, but this is not it and the way it is presented is just plain wrong.

    Hard pass.

  • by janaagaard on 5/6/25, 9:55 AM

    The React example feels dishonest because it could be a lot simpler:

    - All the imports are only needed because a UI library was used. This is not necessary.

    - It also looks like 'User' is imported, but not used anywhere.

    - The curly braces and the return statement can be left out.

    - React.FC<> is unnecessary, you can just specify the type after {users} or, at least, simplify React.FC to FC.

  • by kookamamie on 5/6/25, 8:31 AM

    > <tr :for="user of users">

    I'm at a loss of words. Is this really seen as a good idea?

  • by tipiirai on 5/6/25, 7:40 AM

    Author here: This is a developer preview, ultimately replacing the current Nue JS reactive library. There is a FAQ section at the end of the article. Happy to answer any other questions here.
  • by agluszak on 5/6/25, 8:21 AM

    I'm not a frontend dev, but compared to React boilerplate it looks surprisingly... sane?
  • by isqueiros on 5/6/25, 8:30 AM

    This is yet another clickbaity title from the same developer. On the last thread, there were multiple instances of criticism that were dismissed or ignored.

    Reading through the article, there are many places in which the information is incomplete, wrong and downright dishonest, imo.

    > Through Radix UI, Tanstack Table, and TypeScript interfaces. This results in approximately 170 lines of code, versus 40 lines in Hyper.

    You made the choices to include these. TypeScript boilerplate is inevitable in good quality code. Tanstack and Radix UI add an immense number of features that your plain table just doesn't have. You're also omitting the fact that you import all components automatically with your IDE.

    > ShadCN table requires six different transpilers: ESBuild, JSX Transform, Rollup, TypeScript, Tailwind, and PostCSS.

    Exactly two of these are actual "transpilers" (tsc and esbuild), and only one is used in the compilation step. The JSX transform is performed by esbuild, rollup is a bundler, TypeScript is only used during development, tailwind is not a transpiler at all and PostCSS only transforms CSS for greater compatibility.

    > Modern React components aren't reusable across projects with varying design requirements because the design is hardcoded in the component.

    None of these things are inevitable in React. It's a really bizarre example because this only seems to point to a specific limitation/design flaw on Shadcn specifically.

    > By contrast, Hyper colocates your typography concerns into a single CSS file, acting as the single source of truth for your h2 an p element styling: [global styling]

    If your argument is that components are not reusable across projects, then it's really funny that you're applying your styles globally. What if I don't want my paragraphs to look like that? Then I have to manually override it, duplicating CSS code. This is also legitimately just possible with "Modern React", you can just add CSS and use it however you'd like.

    > cryptic utility classes like dark:bg-lime-400/10 size-[max(100%,2.75rem)]—is systematically eliminated.

    You mean you're not using Tailwind. Which is possible in React.

    > Nue is the "framework" (think Next.js + Astro, but simpler)

    Next.js and Astro are both frameworks which are totally incompatible with one another.

    This whole article seems to stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of (or a lack of desire to understand) what React is or does, and how to fix it. It's genuinely impressive that you were able to build a framework from scratch instead of just... googling your issues? Some of these were solved ages ago and don't require a whole new stack to be created.

    I also believe there is a real argument to be made against React everywhere, but that is beyond the scope of this comment. What I can say is that this comparison would be a lot better if it were against Astro or SvelteKit, which will solve most of the issues you have (boilerplate and bundle size), while also providing a much better supported experience.

  • by QuiCasseRien on 5/6/25, 8:29 AM

    https://nuejs.org/blog/introducing-hyper/simple-table.html

    With vuejs, the template code is very identical to your hyper version.

    React is full bullshit mixing (JSX) code.

    So what's about comparing to a cleaner code and separation like the vuejs.