Frontend web frameworks are software toolkits that handle many of the low-level and repetitive aspects of building a website. These frameworks have made it easier than ever to build a modern website. The open-source Astro framework was created in 2021 for the purpose of creating simple static sites that load quickly. A key factor to its high performance is that, by default, webpages don’t include any JavaScript. However, Astro gives users the ability to opt into using JavaScript wherever it makes sense in their projects. Astro also has the file based routing and server-side rendering capabilities found in frameworks like NextJS.

James Q. Quick has worked at Microsoft, PlanetScale, and Auth0 and is a popular technical content creator. He’s an advocate of the Astro framework and joins the show to talk about what distinguishes it from NextJS, Sveltekit, and other major frameworks.