[macspoofing]

>Svelte has been around for a few years now - and I've yet to see/hear about an application built with Svelte at scale.

What do you mean 'at scale'. It's a UI framework that runs JS and mutates the DOM - there's no issues with 'scale' here.

That Svelte isn't popular is because some frameworks get popular and go viral and others don't. That's it.

[eagsalazar2]

>> That Svelte isn't popular is because some frameworks get popular and go viral and others don't. That's it.

This is complete and utter nonsense. Were you programming seriously before React? There were like 50 popular frameworks all competing with each other and no one framework dominated. React has completely taken over because it provided a dramatically better developer experience and solved a lot of hard and very real problems. As an incumbent it has staying power because there is benefit in sticking with the herd, it remains a pretty nice developer experience, and because it has essential features other frameworks don't really provide yet (React Native being the biggest one although I do realize other frameworks are working on this now too).

Svelt isn't popular because to disrupt a solid incumbent you need something that is dramatically better at solving problems devs actually care about (not corner case performance benchmarks when React is "good enough" 99% of the time). Svelt has failed to do that, plain and simple.

Dismissing Svelt's success/failure by saying all framework success is because of fads is an excuse and, if you are part of the Svelt community, maybe is a clue as to why Svelt has failed to be sufficiently introspective in either accepting it is a niche framework (which maybe it is great for) or that it needs to change if it wants to be more mainstream.

[macspoofing]

>This is complete and utter nonsense. Were you programming seriously before React?

Indeed I was.

>There were like 50 popular frameworks all competing with each other and no one framework dominated. React has completely taken over because it provided a dramatically better developer experience and solved a lot of hard and very real problems.

I'm not saying React isn't a good framework, it is perfectly nice, though I think you're overstating it. AngularJS was a perfectly fine framework as well, and that was out long before React.

>Dismissing Svelt's success/failure by saying all framework success is because of fads is an excuse and, if you are part of the Svelt community

I'm not part of Svelt's community. I haven't actually used Svelt at all. I barely know about it. But I've been around for a while. Why certain frameworks go viral and others do not, is not always based on merit. I'll buy the argument that Svelt doesn't have enough of a benefit over React ... it also came out a few years later and doesn't have Facebook's marketing weight behind it either. Does that mean React is the best thing ever? Eh, it's alright. Having done everything from Flash/Flex/Starling, to Silverlight, to Backbone, to AngularJS, to React, I actually get more excited about State management patterns than widget overlays with some declarative patterns and data-biding. By the way, when it comes to ergonomics of building complex SPAs, I think we're just hitting the place that Flash/Flex was 15 years ago in Web Development.

[eagsalazar2]

I'm not sure I'd agree that when React took over, Angular was a perfectly fine framework. I mean, what happened with React was actually very unusual and remains very unusual. It took over. There is this popular and snarky notion that js devs are constantly chasing every shiny thing but that is exactly the opposite of what has happened over the last several years with React. Instead I'd argue that js devs were nomads prior to React because none of the existing solutions were solving the big problems they had. Not because they are ADD fad chasers. Also I don't remember seeing React "marketing" any more than any other framework. Of course when Google or FB or any other major player gets behind a framework, we take notice, but that doesn't have anything to do with why React took off. It won because frp in a FE framework with the Flux pattern was a total game changer and made FE development awesome for the first time ever (well since Flex, I'll take your word for it since that is even before my time (I cut my FE teeth on jquery and Dojo!))

[miracle2k]

When React first come out, the whole notion of mixing HTML and Javascript code was, if anything, widely rejected. Rather than going viral as a kind of fashionable thing, I feel that it really had to earn its position.

[macspoofing]

>When React first come out, the whole notion of mixing HTML and Javascript code was, if anything, widely rejected.

And it still is. Mixing JS and HTML/DOM does result in fragile code and you shouldn't do it. React VDOM and JSX is not the same thing .. at all. Again, JSX isn't new. XML-based declarative UI frameworks with data-biding were an old thing by the time React arrived on the scene. That's how Flash Flex (MXML) and Silverlight (XAML) worked, for example.

[Marazan]

Angular was a hot mess and I found it a nightmare to program with.

It basically embodied the bad side of JS frameworks pre-React.

It managed to take alllll the wrong lessons from Flex.

[handrous]

Whichever framework has a prominent PR lead is "safe" to choose. If it's bad or breaks or whatever, it's not your fault, it's... I dunno, the hive-mind's, I guess. It's the "no-one ever got fired for buying IBM" factor. Whether it's actually any good or the best fit for the case it's been selected for, is very much secondary.

[protonimitate]

"at scale" here means # of contributors, not # of lines or scope of code base.

Svelte vs React on a single side project I work on in my free time by myself is different conversation than Svelte vs React on a team that's moving fast and has more than a single dev.

[macspoofing]

>"at scale" here means # of contributors, not # of lines or scope of code base.

I understood what you meant, I just disagree that this is a real consideration. Both are just UI frameworks following modern conventions in architecting your SPA code-base. From that point, both are just fine. Other considerations, like the fact that React is more popular and therefore more likely to be supported in the future, and therefore has more devs familiar with it, are way more important.