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.
React is a popular JavaScript library for building user interfaces, developed by Facebook. It allows developers to create interactive and dynamic UI components using a declarative approach. React's virtual DOM implementation ensures efficient rendering performance by minimizing actual DOM manipulations. It also promotes component reusability and composability, making it easier to manage complex UI structures.
React is one of the most popular JavaScript libraries for building user interfaces. It has a large and active community, extensive documentation, and is widely adopted by developers and companies. Hyperapp, while not as popular as React, has gained a following for its simplicity and small size.
Size
Hyperapp is a lightweight library, weighing in at around 1KB minified and gzipped. React, on the other hand, is a larger library, with the core React library being around 45KB minified and gzipped. However, when using React, you can take advantage of tree-shaking to only include the components you need in your bundle.
Developer Experience
React has a mature ecosystem with a wide range of tools, libraries, and community support. It has a declarative syntax, component-based architecture, and provides features like JSX, hooks, and a virtual DOM for efficient rendering. Hyperapp, on the other hand, is designed to be minimalistic and has a simpler API, making it easier to learn and use for smaller projects.
Performance
Hyperapp is known for its performance and small footprint. It uses a virtual DOM diffing algorithm similar to React, which allows for efficient updates and rendering. React, while also performant, has a larger overhead due to its extensive feature set and additional abstractions.
Community and Ecosystem
React has a large and active community, which means there are numerous third-party libraries, tools, and resources available. It is widely adopted by companies and has good support for server-side rendering. Hyperapp, while smaller in terms of community, still has a growing ecosystem with some useful plugins and tools available.
Learning Curve
React has a steeper learning curve compared to Hyperapp, especially for beginners. React's ecosystem is vast and can be overwhelming at first, but once you grasp the core concepts, it becomes easier to work with. Hyperapp, being a simpler library, has a shallower learning curve and is easier to get started with.