Hyperapp is a minimalistic JavaScript library for building web applications using the Elm architecture. It focuses on simplicity, performance, and a small footprint, making it ideal for creating lightweight and fast single-page applications. Hyperapp provides a declarative and functional approach to building UI components, state management, and handling side effects.
Preact is a fast and lightweight alternative to React, offering a similar API and functionality while being smaller in size. It provides a Virtual DOM implementation, component-based architecture, and state management capabilities, making it suitable for building efficient and performant web applications. Preact is actively maintained and optimized for speed and memory usage, making it a popular choice for projects where a smaller footprint is desired.
Preact has gained significant popularity in recent years and has a large and active community. Hyperapp, while not as widely known, also has a dedicated following and is gaining traction in the JavaScript community.
Size
Preact is known for its small size and lightweight footprint, making it an excellent choice for performance-critical applications. Hyperapp is even smaller in size compared to Preact, making it an extremely lightweight option.
Compatibility
Preact is a drop-in replacement for React and provides a similar API, making it easy to migrate existing React applications to Preact. Hyperapp, on the other hand, has a different API and requires some adjustments when migrating from React.
Functionality
Both Preact and Hyperapp provide a similar set of functionalities to React, including components, state management, and virtual DOM. However, React has a larger ecosystem and more extensive community support, which translates to a wider range of available libraries and tools.
Developer Experience
Preact offers a familiar development experience for React developers, with a similar component-based architecture and JSX syntax. Hyperapp, while having a different API, provides a simple and intuitive development experience with a minimalistic approach.
Performance
Both Preact and Hyperapp are known for their excellent performance. Due to their small size and efficient rendering, they can outperform React in certain scenarios. However, React has made significant performance improvements in recent versions and is still a highly performant library.