Mithril.js VS hyperapp

I don’t enjoy React much, but (as I’ve commented before) I do love Mithril (https://mithril.js.org). Immediate-mode UI via a vDOM, like React, but small, simple, and with none of the reactivity complications. I’d never go back to building apps with pure JS.

You can find more information about Mithril.js on its official website.

The idea of nested function calls to build HTML is not new. Back in the hey-day of JS frameworks, this was a common vdom pattern. I kinda miss [MithrilJS](https://mithril.js.org/#dom-elements)

I have mixed feelings about React. I like it better than jQuery, and better than other JS frameworks I’ve used.

But I much prefer Mithril (https://mithril.js.org/), which offers the same immediate-mode advantages (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19746235) but without the crazy complex dependency-tracking reactivity.

I rather liked this comment on React: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38640051

Vue with Vite (the builder/runner) is a stable, open source option. It is really a lightweight start where you're mostly writing HTML with interpolated data, and Vue is updating values correctly and performantly. Just build your reactive HTML app in one file and break into separate components as you're feeling the spirit. https://vuejs.org/guide/quick-start

Mithril if you just want to drop in want a tiny, complete reactive library that doesn't require a build step--this one is most like what you might end up creating in a large jQuery app. You can understand everything from the homepage. https://mithril.js.org/

HTMX if you really like HTML conventions. This doesn't feel jQuery-like and depends on your approach to your server app. https://htmx.org/

React is still has gratuitous complexity. If you need some React like, take a look at mithril which is simpler and much smaller.

The submitter creating multiple var -> let PRs (one PR per file), was also doing this in other projects, and would've broken some of their users.

https://github.com/MithrilJS/mithril.js/pull/2880#pullreques...

And he created multiple PRs there too. And didn't follow their workflow...

Please check out https://github.com/jorgebucaran/hyperapp

The likely reason it never caught on, is that it has similar pitfalls as Backbone:

- manually attaching DOM elements to view controllers

- manually attaching child views

- models which have to be wired individually via .listenTo

- possibility of infinite loops if the events accidentally recurse

A better tiny alternative would be hyperapp[1] or even Preact, that has a similar bundle size.

[1] https://github.com/jorgebucaran/hyperapp

If they're focused on performance and bundle size, it's your chance to try some minimalistic exotic stuff like hyperapp (https://github.com/jorgebucaran/hyperapp) or mithril (https://mithril.js.org/) Just for fun

With a bit of a deadline (due to a mixture of procrastination and confidence that Vue would work) I needed something quick. I have also used Hyperapp in the past but that looks like a dead project right now (although arguably it has all the functionality you need so why keep developing it?).

I’m glad it left that impression! My thoughts have clarified a bit since I read that post, and I think what I describe is more declarative, like React. But the best places to read about it (for web devs) are in Elm!

There is also this new thing I found that seems to really lean into the core of what being functional means here: https://github.com/jorgebucaran/hyperapp

After a while, you see that basically all systems can be modeled as event-driven, functional systems. It’s a flexible model, and fits beautiful into web dev where the semantics are very clear: the system is the web app and events are clicks, keyboard events, asynchronous calls...

Hyperapp is 1kb.

- Hyperapp (https://github.com/jorgebucaran/hyperapp) - Preact - Svelte - React / Vue

I'll tell you what I've learnt from struggling with a bug that made me lose a couple of weeks. The application framework used in this post is Hyperapp, but I guess the same problem can be found in frameworks based on transforming the state of "Single Source of Truth" with pure functions (such as Elm, Redux, so on) if we use them in a wrong way.

Personally, I try my best to avoid bringing in dependencies as much as possible, and try to limit my exposure to only dependencies with low/shallow transitive dependency counts. Unfortunately, this is pretty hard, especially in corporate settings. What we need more of are the opposite of what we've been collectively praising: we need more monolithic packages. Case in point: lodash.template is currently vulnerable with no mitigation, even though lodash itself is not. That's just sloppy publishing practices. Esbuild is a great start over the webpack/babel maze of dependencies. There's a stdlib effort along those lines that hopefully would also help. There's a bunch of micro-frameworks that are used in production just fine and have little to no dependencies.