[HN Gopher] Astro framework lowers competitors by ~40% on perfor...
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Astro framework lowers competitors by ~40% on performance graph to
looks better
Author : thunderbong
Score : 225 points
Date : 2023-07-05 12:07 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| dahwolf wrote:
| Baseline framework performance is pretty much bullshit in any
| case.
|
| Real world performance degradation happens due to poor coding,
| endless dependencies, large amount of API calls that block
| rendering, and a huge amount of 3rd party (tracking) tags.
|
| The core framework is the least of your problems.
| planede wrote:
| Bar graphs not starting at 0 are misleading, even when the axis
| are labeled. The point of a bar graph is that you can intuitively
| compare the visual weights or areas of the bars, which doesn't
| work if they are cut off.
|
| Not labeling the axis is of course even worse.
| hoofhearted wrote:
| I really didn't hear about Astro until more recently after I
| started playing with blogging using Next.js.
|
| I gave Astro a look over and promised myself to be open minded;
| but I wasn't really digging how opinionated their code was to
| themselves. Thousands and thousands of devs built on top of each
| others JavaScript improvements for years, and then Astro comes
| along and decides that us developers need to learn a new ".astro"
| syntax as well.
|
| Imagine if Tailwind or Laravel forced you into funky
| .tailwind/.laravel named files because they felt a certain way
| about their name.
|
| I took this as a sign that Astro might become a very money hunger
| shark at the first drop of blood like other popular CMS providers
| have done in recent memory.
|
| I'm working on a free open source side project now for fun with
| the goal of helping more people create and own their own content
| online, without paying an arm and a leg for it.
|
| I'd love more support and feedback if anyone has any to give :)
|
| If you feel that developers need an open and extensible product
| for creating content, please give me a star, and open some PR's
| and issues.
|
| https://github.com/elegantframework/elegant-cli
| shubhamjain wrote:
| > Imagine if Tailwind or Laravel forced you into funky
| .tailwind/.laravel named files because they felt a certain way
| about their name.
|
| > I took this as a sign that Astro might become a very money
| hunger shark at the first drop of blood like other popular CMS
| providers have done in recent memory.
|
| You're reading way more than what's reasonable. Vue, React,
| Svelte have their own file types. The reason has nothing to do
| with branding. Astro's syntax is just different from anything
| that exists and having a dedicated file type makes sense.
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| The React library requires no custom file types, and doesn't
| have templates. Just import the React package into your pure
| JS project, and get crackin'. Just like jQuery.
|
| JSX is an optional extension of JavaScript which adds a few
| syntactic sugar features, e.g. writing `<FooComponent ...`
| instead of `const FooComponent = () => createElement(...`.
| It's completely distinct from _templates_ in Vue or Svelte.
| This is crucial, because templates are a bad idea. As Steven
| Wittens[1] put it:
|
| > Many competing frameworks acted like this wasn't so, and
| stuck to the old practice of using templates. They missed the
| obvious lesson here: every templating language inevitably
| turns into a very poor programming language over time. It
| will grow to add conditionals, loops, scopes, macros, and
| other things that are much nicer in actual code. A templating
| language is mainly an inner platform effect. It targets a
| weird imagined archetype of someone who isn't allergic to
| code, but somehow isn't smart enough to work in a genuine
| programming language. In my experience, this archetype
| doesn't actually exist. Designers don't want to code at all,
| while coders want native expressiveness. It's just that
| simple.
|
| [1] https://acko.net/blog/get-in-zoomer-we-re-saving-react/
| FireInsight wrote:
| Well, not everything works or needs to work like that.
| Astro is not unique in using templates and it is rather
| justified in using them being a sort of next-gen SSG.
| hoofhearted wrote:
| Was .ts or .tsx not available or something?
| mrcwinn wrote:
| That would a very misleading choice.
|
| .astro files are not .ts or .tsx. Similar to .vue files,
| they have their own structure that needs to be interpreted.
| hoofhearted wrote:
| .tsx would be a totally practical use for their files.
|
| Please explain why they needed to create their own style?
| chromakode wrote:
| Astro files contain markup and separators which are not
| valid Typescript. They also have a different execution
| model.
| LocalH wrote:
| .ts is the extension for MPEG-2 transport stream files, at
| the very least.
| hoofhearted wrote:
| .ts = typescript file.
|
| Just a plain old dumb JavaScript file, but just written
| in the Typescript superset.
| dmix wrote:
| I develop my company front end in Vue 3 and as much as I love
| Vue I'm constantly looking over at React with a bit of
| jealousy.
|
| There is massive value in being the most popular framework.
| Even if it's not as nice as the other ones just the pure scale
| and quality of the 3rd party packages, plug and play
| integrations, component libraries, support posts, etc... that
| stuff really matters when it's your day job.
|
| One big one that's burned me is a lack of (well supported) Vue
| SSR integration in Ruby on Rails.
|
| I'd personally just stick to Next.
| hoofhearted wrote:
| Yeah I hear your complaints about Vue 3. I had the same
| experiences when I was building a few apps with it pre 2020.
|
| Next/Nuxt really take Vue and React to a whole new level when
| building a wet application.
|
| I'm very well versed in all 3 of big reactive JavaScript
| frameworks, and React is my go to for now.
|
| I switched from Vue to React as my default after struggling
| with complex data tables in Vue; when React had a bunch of
| libraries on GitHub that would work for my project at the
| time.
|
| The final nail in the coffin was a contract requirement for
| .Net core framework, and it came bundled with React in it
| already. From there, I found Next, Typescript, and Tailwind,
| and haven't looked back :)
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| I've worked in Vue since 0.12, and have done a few React
| projects along the way, and mainly manage projects using
| React now. Overall I've seen people make a mess of both.
|
| More packages is good and bad. Any given project you picked
| up in Vue over the years mostly used the same router, store,
| etc. You didn't have to learn a new css-in-js library every
| time you work on a different codebase. The only thing
| consistent was _everyone_ (over)using Redux, which I honestly
| wasn 't a big fan of vs Vuex.
|
| React did / does have a much larger selection of quality ui
| component libraries, which is nice. The biggest upsides imo
| were that Vue has relatively bad typescript support vs React,
| and it's easier to hire shitty contractors that already know
| React.
| dmix wrote:
| > given project you picked up in Vue over the years mostly
| used the same router, store, etc. You didn't have to learn
| a new css-in-js library every time you work on a different
| codebase
|
| That's a very good point
| hoofhearted wrote:
| Yeah, I share this same sentiment.
|
| I look at each of the 3 big reactive frameworks as
| different types of screwdrivers in my tool belt; each with
| their own pros/cons, and purposes.
|
| As commenter above said, I've seen a mess of all 3
| frameworks; and I've also seen some beautiful works of art,
| with even Angular too lol.
| mplewis wrote:
| You can use Astro as a build system for React if you want. But
| using Astro files lets you do some more interesting compile-
| time stuff, like resizing images for production from their
| sources.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| I suggest a second look, its actually quite nice being able to
| build a project with only a handful of files.
|
| The .astro extension is the glue needed to put together
| react/vue/svelte under the same project. You don't even have to
| use any of it's features.
| hoofhearted wrote:
| Has anybody had a real world practical use for using React,
| Vue, and Svelte together under the same project?
| ricardobeat wrote:
| It can be a great way of migrating from one another while
| allowing them to coexist.
|
| But that's not the only use case - it's actually simpler to
| setup any of those libraries with Astro, than using their
| own recommended frameworks. And you get partial hydration
| as a default, instead of sending your entire app over the
| wire including all static content.
| jjdeveloper wrote:
| Astro is great ... but agree should never mislead users.
| garblegarble wrote:
| The width values in their HTML make this pretty clear, too. This
| JS will show the width value for each bar on their homepage[1]:
| document.querySelectorAll('div.noise-underlay').forEach(e =>
| e.innerText = e.style.width);
|
| [1] https://astro.build/
| djfdat wrote:
| Astro 97.0149% Score:98
|
| Gatsby 52.2388% Score:68
|
| Next.js 44.7761% Score:63
|
| WordPress 37.3134% Score:58
|
| Nuxt 31.3433% Score:54
| jjkeddo199 wrote:
| My humble NextJS app is 100/100 on Lighthouse, I am really
| hesitant to believe that it scores so low
| FireInsight wrote:
| The statistics are not by Astro or an affiliated entity.
| The graph shows average "real world speeds" on sites
| developed with different frameworks.
|
| The bias we're seeing here is that NextJS is more popular
| and slow sites are being made with it, while people who
| choose Astro are more inclined to value the speed of their
| site.
| Rauchg wrote:
| So is my own site:
| https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1652093980958683137
|
| Scores need to be adjusted by and looked at through the
| lens of complexity. Next.js powers some of the most
| sophisticated web applications in the world, not just your
| blog and mine.
|
| e.g.: the instant you bring "necessary evils" like display
| ads, your scores WILL suffer.
| TZVdosOWs3kZHus wrote:
| Since there are no tics on x-axis, it is not wrong. But I see
| your point.
| bunga-bunga wrote:
| Mathematically not wrong, but most definitely
| misleading/unethical. I don't think this was done
| unintentionally either, because the graph would still be
| perfectly readable without this change (as opposed to "a few
| points variation" where such zoom would be required)
|
| It's perfectly fine to display data this way, but they should
| make it clearer that the start isn't 0 by using wiggly lines or
| by labelling the origin.
| Havoc wrote:
| Is that not just the classic marketing gimmick of not using 0 as
| starting point on graph? Cheeky indeed but not sure I'd phrase
| that as "lowering competitors"
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| At a glance, it looks like this is not the case but a ruler
| could reveal more. The distance for the 35% difference between
| 33 (first red line) and 68 (where the first gray bar ends)
| seems to be roughly half of the distance for the 30% difference
| between 68 and 98.
| keb_ wrote:
| I just want to say that open-source projects like these that have
| these fancy marketing pages and rely on a huge amount of
| marketing tricks & twitter reposts makes me _less_ likely to use
| them. Unfortunately, this is all too common in the JS world these
| days.
| slmjkdbtl wrote:
| Ideally frameworks will be simple enough that chart isn't
| necessary and people can tell with their logical engineer mind
| how fast it will be by understanding how it works (or better,
| can implement a POC yourself in an hour). If I can't do that
| for a framework I won't use it because I'll probably mess up
| (React is an exception because I will still mess up even if I
| know 100% how it works).
| senko wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Open source is supposed to be merit-driven, not hype-driven and
| resorting to dirty tricks like these.
|
| I wouldn't single out the JS community is the only one affected
| by it. To name just two examples outside JS, I blame pipenv
| authors for the same truth stretchi, and if you look at the
| current hype around open source AI libraries, there's a lot of
| it going on as well.
| dmix wrote:
| Idk I really liked how effectively Remix communicated their
| framework on their website:
|
| https://remix.run/
|
| I've never used it but I can see the value in good web
| design. Good Web design = good
| copywriting/colours/information design etc.
|
| Maybe fancy marketing and good Web design are two different
| things though
| mmcnl wrote:
| Remix has sketchy/questionable marketing. Seemingly
| independent techfluenchers suddenly endorsing the product.
| Unfair comparisons with competitors to make the product
| look better. Most people talking about Remix aren't
| actually using it. Red flag to me.
| dmix wrote:
| Was this before or after they got acquired by Shopify?
| no_wizard wrote:
| Before, during, and current, though the Remix hyping
| train has fallen quite a bit as of late, I think in no
| small part due to Twitters recent changes.
|
| I want to like Remix, but they have an odd culture around
| it, aren't really all that willing to talk openly about
| decision making or hearing valid criticism of the
| framework, and made some very bizarre design decisions
| with the framework itself, such as _having zero ability_
| to customize the build pipeline in any meaningful way
| pmontra wrote:
| Their use of colors and line height makes quite difficult
| to read their headers. I copy it the first one to be able
| to read it
|
| > Focused on web standards and modern web app UX, you're
| simply going to build better websites
|
| I'd go with thinner fonts, less saturated colors (e.g.: the
| code on the right is easy to read) and larger line heights.
| dmix wrote:
| I've always seen Remix on mobile not desktop, so I may
| have to reserve my support for it. I don't mind bold
| fonts and saturation when it's used on marketing sites.
| Web standards and the like or most suited for utility
| sites and business tools like Google and Wikipedia. The
| documentation section of a framework site and the more
| serious stuff definitely should keep it simple and
| standard though.
|
| My main complaint would be the scrolljacking on mobile.
| keb_ wrote:
| It's a cool site for sure, but it's also hype-driven and
| buzzword heavy.
|
| Remix is also run by/evangelized by people who: 1. hype
| their own work on Twitter with misleading comments, 2.
| released their framework as "pay-only" intially, 3. sell
| expensive coursework for their own tools instead of, yknow,
| having adequate documentation.
|
| Remix also spun off into its own company before being
| acquired by Shopify. In fact, the whole "open-source
| library spins off into a company" is kind of creepy to me,
| although I'm sure not all are bad actors.
| aatd86 wrote:
| Well it's either that or you don't have a library and
| have wait for someone employed by a company to release
| something.
|
| Someone has to get paid at some point. If this is their
| business why shoot it down? It's either that or subsidize
| this work by working somewhere that pays and leaves you
| with enough time for other projects.
|
| Always wondering why devs are so cheap when they are
| supposed to earn that much more... Or perhaps it is just
| the vocal few on the internet.
| dmix wrote:
| Creating high quality video tutorials as a way to make $$
| to support OSS actually sounds like a good idea to me.
| didntcheck wrote:
| Yep. And what I'm always pleased to see is projects that have a
| section or page dedicated to explaining why it might _not_ be
| the right tool for you, whereas commercial software tries to
| convince you it 's fit for every purpose. And it's quite common
| to see FOSS projects linking to their "competitors". That sort
| of integrity is worth far more than any snazzy marketing
| website (plus some the best tools often have websites that look
| like they were designed in 2005 anyway)
| draw_down wrote:
| [dead]
| dehrmann wrote:
| Appearing immature has been a long-standing issue with some
| open-source projects. Desktop environments have never had the
| polish or cohesion of even Windows, and a large part of that is
| not attracting as many UX or design contributors. Seeing a
| marketing page could be a sign that they also put effort into a
| cohesive API and good docs.
|
| That said, there's a certain project where I want to see the
| API front and center. I've seen companies make all sorts of
| vague marketing promises that I never understood until I saw
| their API.
| paxys wrote:
| Projects like these scream "we are VC funded and will need to
| figure out a 10x exit one day". And that exit will only come by
| converting all the generated community goodwill into cash.
| Staying away from them is the correct decision.
| vasco wrote:
| Exactly, this is a form of marketing VCs found. Instead of
| using up say $500k on Google ads, you use up 6 months of
| development as marketing costs, open source whatever you come
| up with in that first bit, and from then onwards you only
| develop the paid parts.
|
| I'm not that unhappy about this, end of the day there's more
| accessible code, but it's also good to see what's going on.
| sureglymop wrote:
| I highly agree. The main web frameworks I use are Svelte and
| Sveltekit. No comparison charts to other projects, easy to use,
| simple, created by a seemingly normal guy with sane opinions
| out of need for something like it for himself. It's not the end
| all be all, but works well for me. The JS world is pretty weird
| though. It's not only JS frameworks popping up in rapid
| succession but also browser features and proposals developing
| quickly. And what's really weird is how some new features rely
| on JavaScript, such as the newer <dialog> HTML element.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Yes, it's awful that HTML is now dependent on js... how did
| we let that happen?? I'm thinking mostly of HTML5 web
| components, which, unless I missed something, are completely
| useless without js. All I wanted was a way for HTML to import
| other HTML. This seems to be the central issue that we've
| been hacking around for decades with SSI, template languages,
| and js. It's so basic -- everybody wants a header and a
| footer and maybe a menu on each page. Should be an HTML
| feature.
| rado wrote:
| Declarative web components with Shadow DOM are now
| supported everywhere and require no JS.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Fantastic. Thanks for telling me about this.
| spankalee wrote:
| That's not true. Declarative shadow DOM is supported in
| Safari, Chrome, and Edge, but that is not the same as
| declarative custom elements, which don't have a spec yet.
| lenkite wrote:
| Once upon a time we had HTML Imports which were lovely. But
| it made browser vendors nervous since folks could do stuff
| without Javascript. And what would then happen to all their
| tracking ? So, they unanimously purged the feature.
| <link rel="import" href="/partials/browser-vendors-hate-
| this.html" />
| youngtaff wrote:
| The problem with imports is they were render blocking
|
| Don't need JS to do tracking, and browsers can track
| without needs any marketing tags at all
| lyjackal wrote:
| For what it's worth, Astro is a static site generator that
| only relies on JavaScript at build time, and has optional
| integration with the usual js frameworks. In many ways
| that's what it does solve (just importing html)
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| iframes?
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Yes, except without the frame. (Restrict cross-origin
| requests if you worry about security.)
| bilekas wrote:
| Are iframes still fully supported across all browsers
| though?
| gochi wrote:
| You're basically suggesting implementing JS within HTML,
| which htmx exists on a technicality, but not sure that's
| something we should be pushing at all. We're just spreading
| JS problems to HTML which is a perfectly fine language.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Also, JSX is pretty much literally this.
|
| But yes, HTML was clearly designed for producing output
| markup; but in reality the people who want to generate
| markup want to handle nested data, if/else, and loops,
| because that is better than copy pasting a bunch of
| markup everywhere and occasionally fat-fingering
| something.
| johnmw wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow? I think the GP was just talking
| about the ability to import other HTML fragments without
| JS? Something like: <fragment href="site-
| menu.html"/>
|
| Which would load my shared site wide menu html into the
| parent div.
|
| I'm not sure why JS would be needed here? (i.e in the
| same way html <select> elements are interactive without
| needing "JS").
|
| Going a little more out there, what about cross domain
| imports for easy web component consumption?
| <fragment href="https://weather-
| widget.org?location=london" />
|
| I can't see how this would be less secure than current
| cross domain JS imports?
|
| It used to be sorta possible with HTML Imports but that
| spec got dropped [1].
|
| [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/html-imports/
| slmjkdbtl wrote:
| You can just make a function that generates HTML string
| like h("div", { class: "container" }, [
| h("p", {}, "oh hi!"),
| ...projects.map(renderProject), ])
|
| the end result will have no JS if all you want is reuse
| HTML parts, much better than template languages imo (no
| additional syntax, has loops / functions / variables out of
| the box)
| spankalee wrote:
| Web components are custom HTML elements, which typically
| combine state behavior and state-based rendering. How do
| you expect to do that without JS, at least without porting
| a non-trivial subset of a JS-like programming language into
| HTML?
| bongobingo1 wrote:
| > No comparison charts to other projects
|
| At least, none they publish first.
|
| https://youtu.be/AdNJ3fydeao?t=1083
| revskill wrote:
| You seems misunderstand the role of web framework.
|
| People want better abstraction than HTML, and JS is the only
| simple way.
|
| Why i should use HTML input while i have better abstraction
| for it ?
|
| TLDR is, HTML is the issue, not JS frameworks.
| dmix wrote:
| (Old man yells at cloud)
| solardev wrote:
| Well said.
| dmix wrote:
| > And what's really weird is how some new features rely on
| JavaScript, such as the newer <dialog> HTML element.
|
| Compared to the older alert/confirm dialogue which was driven
| by a C++ browser window + JS boolean it kind of makes sense
| for <dialog> to use JS for such a thing and keep it within
| the HTML/stylable context. Like confirms the only place it
| will be used is within JS. So there's no separating the two
| really.
|
| Unless you're just looking for a glorified HTML5 tag that you
| have to do yourself.
| mmcnl wrote:
| That's why I love Vue as well. It's developer & product-
| focused. No fancy marketing. Great docs. Approachable
| maintainers.
| nvln wrote:
| Hope they correct it and don't repeat the mistake.
|
| They really don't have to. I really like astro. They got a lot of
| things right. It is my go to choice for websites these days. I
| say this as a creator of one of the popular Static Website
| Generators.
| OJFord wrote:
| Seems an odd choice of deception, since the real graph really
| would just compress the competitors closer together, wouldn't
| make any of them look _that_ much better really?
| notahacker wrote:
| It'd also make all them look closer to Astro in level of
| performance (not that the benchmark is particularly scientific
| anyway)
| OJFord wrote:
| A bit, but even in the actual numbers, 98 compared to 68 is
| pretty decent? But yes, of course I'm not commenting on how
| fair the test was anyway, just the presentation.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| It's amusing they have to resort to this when the quality and DX
| of a framework are very real things that prevent them from being
| fully commoditized.
| hoofhearted wrote:
| Could you elaborate more on what you mean?
|
| I'd like to hear more of your thoughts on this.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| The experience of using a framework or a library is a very
| real and tangible thing. You might have 5 different
| contenders for a particular task and they all exist at
| different spots in the design space.
|
| Those differences manifest as real pains/joys when used by
| devs. Market those!
|
| I can see perf being a marketing point on some things. But
| for static site generators it feels like a symptom of the bar
| of quality being too low, or everyone just cargo cults
| Apple's marketing schtick.
| hoofhearted wrote:
| I believe I understand what you are saying! :)
| fxtentacle wrote:
| It's the same trick that Apple and Dell use. The left side of the
| graph is not 0% but out of habit we think it is.
| jerf wrote:
| "The left side of the graph is not 0% but out of habit we think
| it is."
|
| This is a learned behavior and it can be fixed. I'm mostly
| broken of it; I assume it's not until I see that it is. Only
| mostly, not claiming to be a bias-free superhuman here, but as
| a for instance I had to check the comments to see what was
| offending people about this chart because I didn't assume it
| was anchored at zero in the first place. I recommend making the
| effort if you can; most charts out of school aren't anchored at
| zero, many wouldn't even be useful if they were.
|
| What jumped out at me actually was the lack of units. At least
| it links to the original report, and I _think_ this is the
| Lighthouse Performance Score, which... is itself in units I don
| 't understand? It's some sort of percentage, not speed measure,
| I think... looks like percentage conformance to an
| SEO/performance test suite? I'm not sure this is really
| something that can be bar graphed in the first place sensibly.
| Percentage conformance to test suites is at least a marginal
| case at _best_ for a bar graph... how "numeric" such a
| quantity is is very debatable. e.g., a 40% compliant product
| may in fact be "less" compliant than a 30% compliant product if
| the former is compliant on a whole bunch of incidental check
| points but misses the most important ones, where the latter is
| compliant on the important ones and misses the incidentals, so
| such "percentages" can break simple numeric properties like
| comparability or the transitivity of such comparisons and
| really aren't numbers. Compliance to such a test suite will
| also be highly dependent on how you use the system; odds are
| its competitors can be tuned to go higher without much work and
| that very easy-to-make mistakes will send a Astro-based site
| plummeting because of what a user might naturally do with it,
| through no fault of the framework.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > most charts out of school aren't anchored at zero, many
| wouldn't even be useful if they were.
|
| What would make it useless to start a graph at zero?
| jerf wrote:
| Consider a chart of the recent M2 money supply for the last
| couple of years: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=16MIK
|
| Whether that is "useless" depends on your point. If you
| want to make a point that they are not large percentage
| fluctuations you may prefer to anchor it at zero. But if
| you want to talk about the fluctuations themselves, you
| want the chart to be full of those fluctuations, not
| anchored at zero and all the fluctuations just little
| wiggles relegated to the top.
|
| So it does depend on what you want to do, but there are use
| cases where anchoring at zero is either useless, or even
| itself at times deceptive, especially in cases where "zero"
| is not a particularly distinguished value on its own.
| (e.g., voltage. zero voltage is itself a relative measure
| to some standard of voltage, so a voltage chart being
| anchored to zero may not mean anything if zero voltage in
| some context isn't special but is itself somewhat
| arbitrary.)
| tpxl wrote:
| > But if you want to talk about the fluctuations
| themselves, you want the chart to be full of those
| fluctuations, not anchored at zero and all the
| fluctuations just little wiggles relegated to the top.
|
| Wouldn't you then plot the _fluctuations_ anchored at 0?
|
| Same with voltage, using some 'absolute' voltage value
| doesn't make sense. If you put ground and zero at 100V
| and the positive node to 105V, your 5V device will work
| just fine.
| zarzavat wrote:
| If you want to make a chart about the fluctuations
| themselves, another way would be to show the differences
| on chart with a centerline at zero and bars that go
| positive and negative. Or if you really want the
| cumulative then normalize the first or last data point to
| be zero.
|
| The problem that people have with not starting at zero is
| how arbitrary it is. You can tell a completely different
| story depending on where you choose the starting point.
| So there should be some kind of justification for the
| chosen Y range.
| jerf wrote:
| I don't know 100% if you think you're disagreeing with me
| or not, but I'd consider your second paragraph a
| restatement of my point from a very different (and still
| valid) point of view. It's always something that a graph
| maker should be thinking about for sure, and a blanket
| "anchor it at zero" is neither desirable, nor even
| necessarily possible all the time.
| dandellion wrote:
| I just assume that if the axes or the columns of a graph are
| not labelled or they don't have units the graph is worthless
| and whoever made it is either incompetent or worse, trying to
| manipulate people.
| bombcar wrote:
| How to Lie with Charts - https://www.amazon.com/How-Charts-
| Gerald-Everett-Jones/dp/14... or How to Lie with Stastitics -
| https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/03...
|
| Always good reading, find at a library near you!
| pacifika wrote:
| What's the left side offset? It makes no sense to me at any
| number
| broast wrote:
| The post suggests it is 40% which seems correct to me.
| loeg wrote:
| From other comments, I believe it's 33%:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36600945
| tryfinally wrote:
| This is inexcusable, and provides no benefit other than
| intentionally confusing the reader. I wish companies were more
| afraid of using blatant dark patterns in whatever they publish.
|
| I'm sure there's a solution somewhere out there - perhaps a
| crowdsourced website akin to the Google Graveyard[0], or certain
| fact checking sites, where bad faith decisions could be archived
| and accumulated until it becomes obvious which companies are
| simply not worth the trouble of working with.
|
| [0]: https://killedbygoogle.com/
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| The web needs an annotation feature so that we can apply the
| "misleading" tag to that chart. It would have a link to details
| about why. That way (if you trust the annotator) it jumps out
| right there on the marketing page instead of requiring you to
| browse HN or twitter to find out.
|
| It's like we have a fire alarm going off in a building other than
| the one that's on fire.
| vlugorilla wrote:
| can't see that link, since I don't have (and don't want to) a
| twitter account
| mentalpiracy wrote:
| as of a few hours ago[0] twitter posts can be viewed without
| login again
|
| [0]https://www.engadget.com/twitter-quietly-backtracks-on-
| requi...
| lpapez wrote:
| I don't have it either but the tweet loads fine?
| cde-v wrote:
| Yeah same, I clicked then half a second later realized it
| probably wasn't going to load... then it did. Seems like
| Enron might be backtracking already.
| azangru wrote:
| Hey, Twitter lets anonymous users view tweets again!
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| I would prefer a ban. I can't view them no matter what since I
| block twitters cookies.
| fckthisguy wrote:
| Only if the URL links to a specific tweet. The feed, and users'
| post history requires a login.
| bigpeopleareold wrote:
| I don't know anything about Astro, but that graph reminded me of
| the Monty Python animation of Crelm toothpaste ... seems like
| Astro only provides 98% protection!
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I don 't know anything about Astro, but that graph reminded me
| of the Monty Python animation of Crelm toothpaste ... seems
| like Astro only provides 98% protection!_
|
| "Have you ever seen a hospital that doesn't have string?"
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| I was enlightened about this decades ago by Edward Tufte [0] -
| sadly since then I get annoyed by most graphs I see, where they
| exaggerate the difference in values with a non-zero axis.
|
| [0] https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi
| sokoloff wrote:
| I came across this example in the last week and it cracked me
| up: https://www.boredpanda.com/average-women-height-data-
| chart-l... (non-zero origin, but the graphics are zero'd to the
| axis)
| jbreckmckye wrote:
| I've seen a lot of shenanigans in JavaScript framework
| benchmarks. For example when Pino (logging framework) compared
| itself using buffered mode (where the logs don't immediately pipe
| to stdout and a crash wipes x kb of logs).
|
| I don't know if the JS community is specifically vulnerable to
| this, or it's universal. It seems to happen a lot though.
| klysm wrote:
| JS is in a state where it is so flooded with frameworks that
| they have to compete heavily in marketing and hype generation.
| Unfortunately that incentivizes shady and misleading practices
| like this.
| SigmundurM wrote:
| This is roughly what the graph should look like:
| https://imgur.com/a/e09wCw3
|
| (Did this by just changing the width percentages of the bars to
| the numbers shown on the graph itself.)
| bogwog wrote:
| > This post may contain erotic or adult imagery. By continuing,
| you acknowledge that you are 18+ years of age.
|
| What's the deal with that?
| SigmundurM wrote:
| No clue. Haven't used Imgur in ages tbh.
|
| It did ask me if the image contained matured content, to
| which I said no. But for some reason it still marked it as
| mature? Very weird...
| itzworm wrote:
| Imgur is used for both regular content and adult content.
|
| They can't guarantee a random picture uploaded by a random
| user isn't porn. (though they give a best effort).
| Additionally the side bars show what's most popular. In
| theory something NSFW could end up with a thumbnail on an
| unrelated picture. So they give you the warning ahead of
| time. (I've used imgur tons and never seen this.)
|
| This picture was a graph.
| rizky05 wrote:
| [dead]
| bbbbbenji wrote:
| Here is how they are calculating the actual axis refinement [0]
| const scoreWidth = (Astro.props.score - 33) * (100 / (100 - 33))
|
| [0]
| https://github.com/withastro/astro.build/blob/main/src/pages...
|
| > (Astro.props.score - 33) * (100 / (100 - 33))
| jer0me wrote:
| https://github.com/withastro/astro.build/blob/7e4bc761570184...
| dmix wrote:
| The benefits of OSS marketing sites. You can make a PR/issue
| and point directly at their sneaky code.
| derkoe wrote:
| Seems like someone has already done that:
| https://github.com/withastro/astro.build/pull/730
| wallmountedtv wrote:
| And its been merged now haha. You can see the change too on
| https://astro.build/
|
| It's awesome just how quickly this got addressed.
| lyjackal wrote:
| Seems like now, predators due to some padding with the
| number text, the bar chart is still not proportional (but
| in the other direction. 98 should be further out)
| endigma wrote:
| Happy to help
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Have you checked it on mobile? Now it's skewed the other
| way due to the space reserved for the label.
| woodpanel wrote:
| Never used Astro but, wow, the comments here are meaner than the
| ,,crime". AFAICT this wasn't done with the intention of outright
| deceit.
|
| all this while the stats themselves seem to be correct.
|
| It's probably done to provide a more interesting graph. Something
| quite common in infographics. Playing devil's advocate here, if
| you aren't able to see that a number higher than 50% isn't
| supposed to be left of center, you're probably in the wrong
| business anyway.
|
| Arguably it would have been more innocent if they indicated the
| shift by cracked bars [1], but then this is probably not provided
| by the charting library they use (or any that I know of).
|
| [1] https://peltiertech.com/images/2011-11/Ybroken.png
| pizzapill wrote:
| I looked at this chart just yesterday for a quick evaluation. The
| statistical axis deception was totally lost on me. However my
| first thought looking at this graph was that they don't compare
| themselves to the fast competition.
| thealchemistdev wrote:
| Yeah. Where's Zola or Hugo?
| FireInsight wrote:
| While Astro technically competes directly with Zola or Hugo,
| a comparison with them would not make sense. The chart is not
| about build times or anything like that, it's about the
| average performance on real world sites built with the
| framework. Astro with first-class support for interactivity
| through JS frameworks, and triest to compete with other JS
| frameworks in speed.
|
| While Hugo and Zola can generate light and heavy websites
| easily depending on the developer's choices, Astro aims to
| express that it's easier to create fast websites, even ones
| that are interactive, with Astro than with a fuller framework
| like NextJS.
| totalhack wrote:
| Aren't they comparing to an old version of Nuxt too? From what
| I've seen on Twitter Nuxt 3 should be pretty close, no firsthand
| experience though.
| eis wrote:
| The report [0] this graph was based on also has major issues as
| it does not consider versions of the frameworks and includes
| sites using old versions of Next or Nuxt compared to only new
| sites for Astro as it's a new framework. There have been major
| changes for example between Nuxt2 (Vue2) and Nuxt3 (Vue3). They
| at least disclose that at the end of the report but it still
| leaves a bad taste because it should have been possible to
| differentiate these without too much work and they were aware of
| the problem. Another issue is that Astro seems to be used a lot
| for static sites whereas the others mostly for dynamic ones. I
| feel like it's really not a fair comparison.
|
| [0]: https://astro.build/blog/2023-web-framework-performance-
| repo...
| cozzyd wrote:
| plotting frameworks that default to suppressed zeros are
| terrible.
|
| (ok, they pretty much all do this...)
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Remember, any graph without properly labeled axes and units is
| trying to mislead you! This goes for Javascript frameworks,
| startups trying to get their first customers, Apple performance
| graphs, and any other type of commercial!
|
| I've started adding companies I've caught doing this to my Pihole
| blocklist so I can stay away from them myself, but the sad truth
| is that most people won't care about the lies and misdirection
| because advertising has normalized this type of behaviour.
| dmix wrote:
| > but the sad truth is that most people won't care about the
| lies and misdirection because advertising has normalized this
| type of behaviour.
|
| This is probably the greatest time in modern capitalist history
| where this is wrong. If anything the youth have grown up being
| assaulted with marketing and become savvy dechiperers and
| careful. My parents generation were more easy suckers.
|
| Being honest matters a lot on social media. People love nothing
| more to expose this sort of thing (drama!) and point at a
| company to laugh at them. This thread on HN and Twitter is good
| proof. Although one could argue the no press is bad press
| angle.
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| Does twitter work again without account?
|
| Edit: It seems specific Tweet URLs and the status page work but
| the timeline does not.
| adewinter wrote:
| [flagged]
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| How is their comment a complaint? If anything, they seem to
| be praising tweets being available for unregistered users
| now.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| There deserves to be a serious discussion of whether Twitter
| content should even be allowed here anymore if it can't be
| seen. We already hated it before the acquisition, and it's
| gotten worse since then.
| onlypositive wrote:
| [flagged]
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| There's at least substantive content behind an actual
| publisher's paywall.
| onlypositive wrote:
| Sure there is. Where's the NYT article on the grusch
| hearings? Journalism? Try establishment mouthpiece.
| orra wrote:
| In the UK this is almost a meme. Search for "Only the Lib Dems
| can win here", for mathematical charting bemusement.
| wg0 wrote:
| These frameworks have fancy websites. Framework themselves aren't
| something you can jott down on a weekend. I mean so many.
|
| What's in it for them? Bunch of free souls just showcasing their
| excellence or what's at play? Or there's hidden underground cash
| flow rivers that a casual observer misses totally?
|
| Genuinely oblivious and curious.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| This would be in the "damn lies" category of the "lies, damn
| lies, and statistics" aphorism.
| helf wrote:
| [dead]
| rcme wrote:
| I feel like this is an intentional error designed to illicit
| exactly the sentiment expressed by many people commenting here.
| That is to say, this is manufactured outrage. And look at the
| results: Astro made it to the front page of HN!
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