FAQ

Who are you?

I’m Tero Piirainen, a frontend developer from Helsinki. I’ve been around for 25+ years building open-source projects and startups. I’m mostly known for Riot.js, Flowplayer, and jQuery Tools. Right now I’m focusing solely on Nue.

What is Nue?

Nue is a “closer-to-standards web framework”. The focus is on minimalism, separation of concerns, and semantic web design. That is: there are as little abstractions as possible. The layout, styling, and logic are separated, and CSS is used as intended.

Why to word Nue?

“Nue” comes from the German word “neu”, which translates to “new” in English. It is pronounced like /nju/.

Do we need another framework?

Happy with status quo -> Makes you feel more fatique See the benefits of Nue -> You probably

We do. Developers are suffering. UX developers in particular. And the role of a web designer is practically gone. There are so many build steps in the current stack that only the more savvy JavaScript engineers can understand. Please read the backstory for a deeper rant.

There’s also a huge amount of resistance: developers have adopted new, nonstandard ways of building things and it’s hard/impossible to change their minds. So a lot of time will go into writing. Help needed!

Can you pull this off?

Yes. The code is mostly there. It just needs to be polished, packaged, and documented. Writing docs and keeping up with the open-source community takes time.

Why all the effort?

It’s hard to look from aside how web development is slipping away from standards to something more complex, heavy, and proprietary. I do this for pain, not fun. I cannot rest until I’m done.

Can I help?

Please do! Send me email: tipiirai @ gmail com.

What are the guiding principles?

  1. Separation of concerns: HTML, CSS, and JS should be separate.
  2. Minimalism: 10 lines of code is easier to scale than 100 lines of code.
  3. Semantic web design cascaded stylesheets is a standard. Tailwind is not

What are the benefits of Nue?

  1. Faster tooling
  2. Improved developer experience
  3. Slimmer sites
My workplace in Kallio
My workplace in Kallio

Who is Nue inspired by?

Mostly Jarred Sumner for developing Bun — a super awesome project to replace the whole Node ecosystem with a faster one. It’s a new JavaScript runtime, bundler, test runner, and NPM-compatible package manager. Thanks, Jared for showing how a single developer can pull big dreams!

While Bun makes JavaScript faster, Nue makes front-end development faster. Nue + Bun is really the perfect combination for a front-end developer.

Other people that inspired Nue are:

Salvatore Sanfilippo for this action-provoking tweet:

“I look at the web today. Not as a programmer, but as a user of broken sites that are unable to obey the most basic rules of navigation and usability, terribly slow despite the hardware progress. And I can only think that modern frontend development has failed.”

Steve Jobs for the phrase:

“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backward for the technology”

Dieter Rams for stating the obvious:

“Less, but better”

Aren’t you reinventing the wheel?

This is more like fixing a broken tire or replacing a massive pickup truck with a modern electric car.