Show HN: Nue – Apps lighter than a React button

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Marketing & “React button” comparison

  • Many commenters find the “lighter than a React button” tagline misleading or off‑putting.
  • Main criticism: it compares a minimal Nue SPA to a full React + Vite + Tailwind + ShadCN setup, where the “button” pulls in a whole stack; nobody ships React just for a single button.
  • Others argue the comparison still highlights real overhead in typical stacks and successfully provokes thought about bloat, but want clearer disclosure that features and complexity are not equivalent.
  • Some see the confrontational tone as refreshing; others say it undermines trust and overshadows the technical work.

SPAs, MPAs, and appropriate use

  • Big subthread questions why so many apps are SPAs at all, suggesting most content‑heavy sites should be MPAs/SSR with minimal JS (Rails/Hotwire, htmx, etc.).
  • Counterpoint: complex B2B dashboards and highly interactive apps benefit from SPA architectures and clear backend/frontend separation.
  • Several note you can still build “SPAs” with Rails/HTMX; others push back that this conflates patterns.
  • Consensus: both SPA and MPA can work; the real issue is overusing SPA stacks where they’re not needed.

Performance, WASM, and the 150k‑record demo

  • Nue’s Rust/WASM demo over 150k records is positioned as something that would crash JS/React. Multiple commenters reproduce similar or larger datasets (up to 1M rows) in plain JS and React using virtualized lists without crashes.
  • The reported JS stack overflow is traced to a specific array spread into push pattern, not an inherent JS limit. Rewriting the loop avoids the overflow and runs faster than the WASM version for many cases.
  • Some users find the demo subjectively slow due to animations and lack of input throttling; disabling CSS effects makes it feel much snappier.

Types, architecture, and “web standards” positioning

  • Nue’s untyped view layer is intentional; types are encouraged in Rust/Go “engines” instead.
  • Many consider lack of TypeScript support in templates a deal‑breaker for large apps, arguing typed JSX/templates are crucial for refactors and catching UI bugs.
  • Others welcome plain JS and JSDoc, citing projects that moved away from TS internally, but still expect first‑class types at the library boundary.

Relation to existing tools and DX

  • Commenters repeatedly compare Nue to Astro, Svelte/SvelteKit, Solid, Vue, htmx, Lit, Inertia, and Preact; several say they don’t yet see what Nue uniquely offers beyond being small and standards‑leaning.
  • DX trade‑off is noted: smaller, simpler output vs. missing ecosystem, typings, mature state management, and established patterns.
  • Some like the MVC separation, markdown‑centric content flow, and design‑system vision; others say state management and change‑tracking details remain unclear from the docs.

Demo quality, bugs, and polish

  • Reports of layout and scrolling issues on iOS and Android, Safari glitches, and odd page‑height behavior; some were fixed quickly, others persist.
  • Multiple people dislike the blur/fade animations, which make the UI feel slower and “hide” performance. Requests for an easy way to disable motion.
  • Several want more prominent, concrete code examples on the homepage to understand how Nue apps are actually written.