HACKER Q&A
📣 imnotreallynew

Best simple web framework without “magic”?


I’ve become very disinterested in all of these web frameworks where there is so, so much underlying code tucked away in a node_modules directory or some equivalent even for the simplest of apps.

I’m not particularly interested in going back to raw HTML/JS/CSS, so hoping to find a halfway point.

Some of my early searches have led to frameworks like Mithril.js, which seem to be relatively simple. Does anyone have any other suggestions for someone who prefers simplicity over “magic”?

  👤 logicalmonster Accepted Answer ✓
Personally, I think Mithril.js is the framework that is easiest to "fully understand" due to the small and logical API. There's no magic or complicated stuff going on if you know JS. The problem with Mithril is that it's not as widely used, so there's not as many resources and a large ecosystem around it.

Svelte.js sort of gives me the same feeling. There's more "magic" in Svelte, but at least its mostly hidden in the compilation step and you're mostly operating in normal HTML/CSS/JS.