Sunsetting the Techempower Framework Benchmarks

After 10+ years of ranking how fast popular website tools run, the famous TechEmpower charts have been archived and frozen. The goodbye post was heartfelt, but the comments lit up because it never said why. One user shot the opening volley: “This text lacks information about why it is being sunset,” calling out the missing reason and setting the tone for a thread heavy on side‑eye and questions. Fans like WatchDog got nostalgic, saying they’d check the results “from time to time” because the wide coverage gave a rough, reality‑check view of what different stacks could do. Translation: this was the internet’s unofficial scoreboard for web speed, and now it’s gone.

Then came the chaos. A hot take from a user named “narrator” claimed AI makes frameworks less important because bots will happily hammer out long code and raw database queries. Cue jokes about ChatGPT writing “document.getElementById(‘longVariableName’)” all day while developers sip coffee. Others, like GrooveSAN, kept it practical: okay, so what’s the replacement? With no official plan and the GitHub issue short on explanations, the crowd split between sentimental goodbyes, transparency demands, and “AI ate the frameworks” memes. The charts may be gone, but the drama is very much alive.