# Jest

Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/jest/

5 people recommended Jest in Hacker News comments, 2 had mixed feelings and 11 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 12 months, in 5 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Criticized more than recommended: critics find it slow and its mocking awkward; those who recommend it see it as JavaScript test runner that people pair with other tools and find helpful for debugging.

Summary written by Claude from the comments below.

## What people warn about

- Hard to test and mock (4 comments in the sample): "jest mocks overwrite the importing mechanism without any type safety." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48697078)) "its a horrible code smell, and AI loves to jest.mock" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48697131)) "This stuff is very hard to test in jest." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45906327))
- Slow compared to alternatives (3 comments in the sample): "one of the worst and slowest pieces of software I've ever worked with" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48764922)) "a lot of the slow cruft in Jest was necessary for correctness" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48764239)) "my memory is that Mocha was much faster" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48766378))
- Overly complex tooling (2 comments in the sample): "A lot of the modern tooling feels like a rube goldberg machine when it goes wrong." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46249571)) "over-complicated nature of both Jest and Vitest" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48194952))

## Why people recommend it

- Works alongside other testing tools (3 comments in the sample): "I also like being able to reuse tools like Playwright, Jest and Vite." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46543222)) "GraphQL, Jest, Llama (one of the first open weights models) and more" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48997141)) "a pretty sweet Cypress & Jest testing setup" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45803256))

## Other testing frameworks people recommend

- [cargo-nextest](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cargo-nextest/): 17 recommend, 1 mixed, 1 criticize
- [Testcontainers](https://hackerapproved.com/p/testcontainers/): 13 recommend, 1 mixed, 3 criticize
- [Vitest](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vitest/): 13 recommend, 0 mixed, 8 criticize
- [Mockito](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mockito/): 11 recommend, 6 mixed, 12 criticize

## The badge

A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged.

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Jest", https://hackerapproved.com/p/jest/ (5 recommend, 2 mixed, 11 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026).

Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.