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Comment by evantbyrne | Hacker News Reader

The methodology is questionable. Experimentation would be a lot more informative. Build something with a couple different sets of technologies using the best practices for each stack (practices for a React SPA should be _very_ different from a server-rendered HTMX application). Then compare metrics like development time, code size, etc and discuss findings.

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Such an experiment has happened and well-documented here: https://htmx.org/essays/a-real-world-react-to-htmx-port/.

But still, experiments only happen in one context so its hard to extrapolate how the results would predict your own situation. This is why I think parsing opinions is a great through-provoking exercise.

It depends on the purpose of the analysis. To have any place in serious decision making, the methodology itself needs to be justified. One cannot simply assume that filtering social media posts by upvotes translates to real differences in the software development lifecycle. To give an anecdotal example of challenges with the given approach, most professional developers I've met do not meaningfully track time spent on tasks. So one of the questions that could be raised is: do developers on social media even have the data or experience to make these evaluations?

The original purpose of the article is to highlight opinions from the community—not to be a scientific conclusion on what approach is better.

If somebody is seeking an answer for their own engineering problems, then the necessary due diligence is always required on their part.

Please do not take this criticism personally, but it also fails as a survey. Two issues that immediately stand out are that responses were filtered out entirely for not being the most popular and then the remainder were cherry picked based on unclear criteria. You seem to have an interest in surveys and many of the skills needed to conduct them, so it would benefit you to study the topic more scientifically. Wish you the best.

none taken—I appreciate the criticism!

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