JavaScript Framework Tier List

0:41 vanilla js 1:05 jquery 1:24 alpinejs 2:35 angular 3:19 astro 3:45 emberjs 6:28 handlebars 7:53 qwik 11:27 lit 12:50 preact 14:52 react/hardly know her 14:57 htmx/not a javascript framework (same thing) 16:37 solidjs 19:11 svelte 24:24 vue 27:35 nextjs 28:54 remix 32:51 gatsby 34:24 nuxt 36:27 flutter/instant S tier (same thing) 37:06 elm/haskell (same thing) 38:26 flash/based (same thing) 39:15 react again

So Theo decided to start a war for Christmas...

Why does modern angular still gets judged on AngularJS experience? I find it easy to maintain large codebases in Angular than in React's ecosystem.

Vue/Nuxt way is the only abstraction that feels natural to me. When I started exploring frontend world i started with React, and felt like I could get used to it. But then I had to do project in work using Vue Composition API and things immediately clicked. It gives perfect balance between ease of use and how much you can do with it without using tricks. And Nuxt gives the real benefit of frontend and backend being separated without PITA of having to keep backend and frontend version of responses.

Vue had a lot of ties from the Laravel community. I started on react class component as a junior/intermediate dev, hated the function component at first, switched to vue for SFC.... never came back. Altough I've recently nedded Vue's JSX support for some edge cases. (Sorry for my english... i'm not a native speaker!!)

One of my favourite things about Nuxt is that it's not a one huge monolith, but rather a bunch of things composed together to create what is Nuxt. Everyone can use those parts in whatever they're building, as almost all of it is available as its own package. Want a server they use? It's nitro(pack). Want auto imports? It's unimport (which is an unplugin, means it works in Vite, Webpack and others). Want load configs like Nuxt? Look at c12. And so so much more. Nuxt existence benefits even the people who don't directly use it (and Nuxt is benefitted by this as well). And you are totally right about the community around Vue, it's a lot of amazing chill people from all around the globe just making neat things without drama or some hardcore competition. Truly lovely stuff.

So cool to see the Nuxt team get the credits they deserve 👍

I've never seen Theo as angry as when he talked about Ember

I think he doesn't understand that Alpine isn't a variant of htmx it's a technology that compliments htmx. Also that Lit example shown doesn't work in a browser because of the decorators. It needs TS.

I think you should really look deeper into Qwik (maybe you have overlooked something there), do you really think React Server Components are a better way. I would be curious to see a comparison of them from your point of view.

I'm pretty "vanilla" when it comes to these frameworks, because for most of my use-cases, I just don't have any need for the brand new functionality. Usually I just enjoy either React or Vue in their simple form, but lately I've been learning Next, and it's quite excellent at what it offers

Disappointed Angular isn't higher. With the recent advancements (e.g. signals, standalone components, deferred loading, etc), it's come a long way in terms of DX.

Alpine is a framework to complement HTMX, they're not a replacement for each other. With HTMX you can't do client interactivity that is not bound to the server data, things like modal windows, accordions etc. Alpine and Hyperscript add interactivity on the client side.

12:00 Angular has this feature called Angular elements.

HTMX and Alpine are very different overall. I don’t think they necessarily “compete” in the same arena. Ok, there's some similarity in that they are both based on composing behavior directly into markup via attributes. And there is a bit of overlap in functionality (e.g. x-on:click vs hx-on:click). However, HTMX is focused on interactions with the server via HTML. When using them together, we will primarily rely on HTMX to communicate with the server while using Alpine to provide richer client-side interactions and (if necessary) manage some transient state related to just the UI.

Astro is an ssg or a ssr framework like nextJs with html component. It is best for getting granular control like vanilla and jquery while maintaining component based architecture and ssr ssg with other frameworks like react. S tier for me (personal opinion 😅)

@debug in Svelte is not a console.log, it is invoking the javascript debugger on the variable, or function that you have specified

had a wonderful time watching this with your quick run downs on each framework 👍

I see Qwik kinda of as htmx + react, it has the same performance of htmx, where interactions are encoded in html, but you get to write it in a simple composable way like you do react, which is pretty sweet. so if you like htmx you like Qwik. with htmx you still need a backend framework to render html for different components on different api endpoints.

Angular at D? Lol I’ll take Angular any day over React. Maybe it’s not as easy to dive into from scratch but once you’ve got it figured out it is extremely well organized and for that I can navigate working through an Angular repo with my eyes closed.