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by jorroll 1573 days ago
I think a challenge for new javascript libraries/frameworks is that, for many developers (including myself), we're evaluating the whole architecture. The question isn't, "Which library has the best API and is most performant for rendering components?" It's which choice gets me to "usable app" quickest and most pain-free? Included in the calculation is the ecosystem, the build tools, the documentation, the deployment strategy.

For all these reasons, while I do really love Solid's API, React + Nextjs + Vercel (or another React stack like Gatsby, etc) ultimately provides a smoother development experience for the time being. It isn't enough to build a better React, someone needs to provide an easy to use build and deployment process for it as well.

I ended up giving up on my Solidjs experiments because I spent too much time debugging the build process and porting React libraries. It's still not obvious to me how I could deploy a Solidjs app to, e.g., a Cloudflare Worker and provide a `/api` callable functions endpoint for the application. I have no doubt that I could figure all of it out, but I'm not interested in spending the significant amount of time necessary to do so. I love the fact that Nextjs just gives me all of this. All of this is to say that, while the core Solidjs library is really "solid" (pun intended), I still don't think Solidjs is ready for new projects (unless you really like doing things from scratch).