Why Svelte might disrupt the JS framework space
What is svelte
Svelte is a JS framework that borrows ideas from other frameworks, but with a twist of its own. Cause it’s not a framework but a compiler of sorts, that compiles your code to pure JS without any dependencies added by the framework. That results in very tiny bundle sizes, with all the luxuries of a framework. Sounds tempting ? Read on.
How is this different from Angular Vue or React
When I first heard about Svelte, I knew this was different. Cause all those who talked about it seemed to be very much interested and the vibe surrounding the framework seemed to be promising. Svelte wasn’t a me too framework firstly. It could do what others did but with a much lesser bundle size and very high performance. Which is exactly what the rest of the frameworks are trying to do with their existing code. There are numerous benchmarks that clearly show how Svelte trumps in all performance tests against its competition. Svelte also delivered in some real world cases where developers were able to build apps for low power devices like POS machines where React, Vue and many other frameworks had failed to deliver.
Why would you want to use them
You are building an application where you need very low bundle size, best in class performance and it probably also need to run on very low end devices or devices which may have poor network capabilities. If these are your key priorities then Svelte is worth trying out. You might not see Svelte replacing React or Vue, but it might carve out a niche like Rust or WASM. Performance critical applications may be seen switching to Svelte in the near future.
What is road forward for Svelte
Svelte is developed by Rich Harris who works at New York times and is mostly a one man show. But there’s a huge open source community backing right now. Svelte isn’t a new framework, in fact the first version was released back in 2016 and it grew in popularity in the last few months after the release of version 3. Svelte 3 had brought in many much needed addition to the framework. Svelte also has a static site generator called Sapper which is similar to Gatsby.There’s also Svelte Native which will be similar to React Native and Svelte GL which is an alternative for Three.js with Svelte.
If that didn’t get you excited I guess you need to hear it right from the horses mouth. Here’s a talk Rich Harris gave called Rethinking Reactivity. That will get you fired up.
