Dagger.js

Languages and libraries

frontend javascript micro-framework

SHOW HN2025

80points
89comments
#890of 3,837 in 2025
Top 24%of 2025 by points

How HN took it

DebatedReal support and real criticism

6 positive, 8 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 9 critical, out of 24 comments about the project. Thread score -0.13.

Idea: 5 for, 2 againstExecution: 0 for, 1 againstDesign: 0 for, 1 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Buildless approach appealing

    From 1 comment

Objections

  • Longevity and lock-in concerns for a young project

    From 2 comments
    • Totally fair — longevity is a real concern, and I’ve had the same hesitation with new tools myself. The nice thing about Dagger.js is that it’s intentionally very small and…
      TonyPeakman on HN
    • Thanks to both of you for the thoughtful discussion — I really appreciate seeing different perspectives here. On the “lock-in” concern: that’s a fair point. dagger.js is still…
      TonyPeakman on HN
  • Compact source code is hard to read

    From 1 comment
    • Thanks to both of you for the thoughtful discussion — I really appreciate seeing different perspectives here. On the “lock-in” concern: that’s a fair point. dagger.js is still…
      TonyPeakman on HN
  • Domain resolution problems reported

    From 2 comments
    • I'd guess people are getting different results because of the varying A records https://dns.google/query?name=daggerjs.org https://www.whois.com/whois/3.33.130.190 and…
      mdaniel on HN
    • Good catch — thanks for digging into that. You’re right: the domain still has a mix of A records (AWS + GitHub Pages), which explains why some people see different results. I…
      TonyPeakman on HN

Requests

  • More readable source code

    From 1 comment
    • Thanks to both of you for the thoughtful discussion — I really appreciate seeing different perspectives here. On the “lock-in” concern: that’s a fair point. dagger.js is still…
      TonyPeakman on HN
  • Standards-compliant attribute syntax for XML/XHTML

    From 2 comments
    • Thanks for laying this out — I share your priorities on minimal boilerplate and a buildless-first workflow. dagger.js is designed around that: no bundler by default, just HTML +…
      TonyPeakman on HN
    • Thanks a lot for the detailed suggestions — this is super helpful. You’re right that symbols like +//@ aren’t valid in XML/XHTML, and the original idea was just to keep things as…
      TonyPeakman on HN

Questions

  • How it differs from Alpine, petite-vue and Vue ESM

    From 3 comments
    • That’s a good comparison — Svelte also started from the “write less, ship less” idea, and I have a lot of respect for it. The big difference is that Svelte achieves that by…
      TonyPeakman on HN
    • Yeah, that’s a fair comparison — Dagger.js lives in a similar space to petite-vue / Alpine: no build step, HTML-first, sprinkle behaviors where you need them. The main…
      TonyPeakman on HN
    • That’s a good point — the ESM build of Vue is solid, actively maintained, and does give you a no-build setup with the full feature set. dagger.js aims a bit differently: it’s…
      TonyPeakman on HN

Alternatives named

  • Alpine.js

    From 2 comments
    • That’s a good comparison — Svelte also started from the “write less, ship less” idea, and I have a lot of respect for it. The big difference is that Svelte achieves that by…
      TonyPeakman on HN
    • Yeah, that’s a fair comparison — Dagger.js lives in a similar space to petite-vue / Alpine: no build step, HTML-first, sprinkle behaviors where you need them. The main…
      TonyPeakman on HN
  • Vue ESM build

    From 2 comments
    • If I had to use one of these modern JS frameworks, I think Vue without build step would be one of the candidates. No shitty webpack configuring, no minimizer, no bundler, no…
      zelphirkalt on HN
    • That’s a good point — the ESM build of Vue is solid, actively maintained, and does give you a no-build setup with the full feature set. dagger.js aims a bit differently: it’s…
      TonyPeakman on HN
  • Svelte

    From 1 comment
    • That’s a good comparison — Svelte also started from the “write less, ship less” idea, and I have a lot of respect for it. The big difference is that Svelte achieves that by…
      TonyPeakman on HN
  • Solid

    From 1 comment
    • Solid is definitely in that “compile-to-direct-DOM” camp, and I think it’s awesome — it shows how far you can push the reactive model with JSX + fine-grained updates. dagger.js…
      TonyPeakman on HN
  • Aurelia

    From 1 comment
    • Aurelia is a great framework — I really like the way it ties template, JS, and CSS together into one unit. That convention makes it very natural to organize components and…
      TonyPeakman on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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