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Octane – React’s programming model, compiled

octanejs.dev

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Re: Octane – React’s programming model, compiled

#41

Post by trueadm »

lioeters wrote: post #37
gbjcantab wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s especially grating in this case because Dominic Gannaway, the creator of Octane, is the real deal (creator of Inferno, former React core team member, former Svelte core team member); so the project landing page looks like generic 2026 slopcoded abandonware, but it is in fact a real project made by someone who’s one of the great minds of frontend framework development (with heavy Claude use apparently, to be clea…

Sad to see formerly talented software developers become mediocre and bland, losing their unique flavor and personality. Maybe there's still some insight or idea that's their own creation, but it's obscured by the same text and code generation service, a soul-less corporate voice. It's possible language models will mature to better emulate that ineffable quality of having a "heart" or "taste", but it would still be em…

We’re looking to address the feedback with the website copy. Thank you for the feedback!

Re: Octane – React’s programming model, compiled

#42

Post by trueadm »

adzm wrote: post #31
Guillaume86 wrote: post #24

Just took a glance so I may be completely wrong, fell free to ignore, but if I understand correctly, tsrx is just syntactic sugar for normal tsx code and does not enable anything new? If this is the case: I think introducing tsrx as part of Octane muddies the water a bit and makes me more hesitant to try (even if it is optional). The idea to make tsx files more readable may be interesting but in that case it should g…

agreed, tsrx is neat as supported but personally i'm not a fan of it, makes me think of angular and more domain specific language stuff. the whole tsrx angle makes me wary of this project entirely, which is a shame, since octane does sound pretty neat. i'll still check it out, but this was indeed my initial reaction upon seeing tsrx here

TSRX allows for better runtime generated guarantees, especially around loops which generates faster runtime logic from it. We can’t assume too much statically when reading something.map as the method might have different heuristics

Re: Octane – React’s programming model, compiled

#43

Post by trueadm »

catlifeonmars wrote: post #36
throwaway27448 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still think code quality itself reigns supreme. I couldn't give less of a damn about a website.

Code quality at one point in time is useful, but what you want is dependability over time and responsiveness to security fixes; this means looking at the maintainer and their attention to detail. Sure, the website by itself doesn’t mean anything, but placed into context it could mean the maintainer doesn’t put much effort into clear, unambiguous communication.

We’ll address the website content :) thank you for the feedback

Re: Octane – React’s programming model, compiled

#44

Post by trueadm »

xpl wrote: post #18

Does it have any overlaps with React Compiler — like the auto-memoization that they have? Also, is there any read on the downsides / shortcomings / caveats of Octane vs. vanilla React?

The Octane compiler has overlap in terms of memoization but also goes far further

Re: Octane – React’s programming model, compiled

#45

Post by trueadm »

exceptione wrote: post #39

The copy reads like it is react but improved. Which begs some questions: what strings are attached and why wouldn't the authors of react adopt this? What reasons would developers have to not switch from react to octane?

I mean I created Octane coming from being one of the authors of React from years ago. Octane makes breaking changes compared to React to improve on things that aren’t that important in 2026. For example the synthetic event system - which takes up 13kb of React’s payload and adds overhead over just using the correct DOM events.

Re: Octane – React’s programming model, compiled

#46

Post by angrybards »

trueno wrote: post #21
atraac wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weren't there RedwoodJs, BlitzJs and few others that did that already?

theres gonna be a lot more at this rate. everyones tribalistic preferences about how web frameworks should be made... is never going to get solved. now everyone can just spend a week of their claude max plan making whatever framework they want. ive done it like twice now in the past year just for shits and giggles, it is fun but i wont pretend like i know where any of this is going, i think a hybrid of ssr and a blen…

I've been working on my own framework for several years now. I chat to AI about it but otherwise it is hand coded. It is interesting looking at how much effort goes into framework development when in theory an AI can spin up precise code that does just what is needed for the situation, assuming it isn't hallucinating or going off the rails of course. But I don't think we have seen a truely vibe coded, AI just doing what is optimal framework come out of the woodwork even though the space has had a lot of time to show something. I'm interested to see what it looks like when it happens.

Re: Octane – React’s programming model, compiled

#47

Post by ameliaquining »

ddevnyc wrote: post #29
christophilus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I thought it sounded like OpenAI more than Claude, though maybe they’ve converged. It’s been a while since I used Claude.

There's enough inbreeding^W distillation happening that whatever OpenAI tone you're thinking of is probably Claude's tone (and vice-versa)

You really think the big American labs are distilling each other? That surprises me.

Re: Octane – React’s programming model, compiled

#48

Post by ddevnyc »

ameliaquining wrote: post #47
ddevnyc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's enough inbreeding^W distillation happening that whatever OpenAI tone you're thinking of is probably Claude's tone (and vice-versa)

You really think the big American labs are distilling each other? That surprises me.

Think? I know it

Re: Octane – React’s programming model, compiled

#50

Post by Semiapies »

vivzkestrel wrote: post #34

- please post 10 new frontend frameworks daily to HN - i ll take that over the AI, GPT, LLM, Agent stuff on HN anyday now

What, you don't like hearing about how someone used the new AI to AI an AI in order to bash something together that will never get updates?
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