You can see the performance difference bench-marked by a competing framework non the less, here: http://pycnic.nullism.com/ These are done running a standard uwsgi setup for all frameworks (even playing ground).

> These aren't new, though the approach to them seems quite clean.

This is really the crux of it, nothing is new. That is before Flask etc you could do everything you can do with Flask now, but the approach was bad and not clean. Required a lot of duplication of work. Flask helped fix that. You can do the hug enables through flask now, but the approach isn't clean, they require a lot of duplication of work. Hug fixes that.

The same reasons people started using Flask are the same reasons they should start using hug. It provides a cleaner, faster, and better base for the APIs of the future - just like Flask did when it came along.