Virtual DOM is pure overhead (2018)

Re:Virtual DOM is pure overhead (2018) by ng12 on Saturday May 18, 2019 @10:12PM (#19950976)

I keep hearing this and find it really hard to care about. Runtime performance is not a bottleneck for me. Once in a blue moon I'll have to optimize a React component with shouldComponentUpdate but otherwise I have no performance concerns even on old browsers.

There are other characteristics that are very, very important like build size. VDOM is not worth thinking about.

Honestly I don't understand Svelte. It sounds like it's very good at the things it does but the things it does are not the things I need.

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Re:Virtual DOM is pure overhead (2018) by dsissitka on Saturday May 18, 2019 @10:43PM (#19951114)

If you value build size you might want to take another look at Svelte. Build size is one of its strengths. For example, the Svelte implementation of RealWorld is roughly 10% of the size of the React/MobX implementation:

https://medium.freecodecamp.org/a-realworld-comparison-of-fr...

Edit: Confused the React/Redux implementation with the React/MobX implementation the first time around.

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Re:Virtual DOM is pure overhead (2018) by ralphstodomingo on Sunday May 19, 2019 @06:59AM (#19952661)

I feel as if Svelte came at the wrong time. These days, when most people know either React or Vue or some other thing, and computing devices are performing better over time, there's diminishing returns on performance optimization. Sure, you do a bit of it, and then you're often better doing something else, like enhancing developer experience for example.

I really like the idea, and will play around with it, but fat chance it's getting into production with me. I am much more productive with React now, and I worry more about business requirements than raw performance (that I almost never worry about these days).

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Re:Virtual DOM is pure overhead (2018) by atan on Sunday May 19, 2019 @09:41PM (#19956887)

> Sure, you do a bit of it, and then you're often better doing something else, like enhancing developer experience for example.

Aside from its performance optimizations, arguably one of the biggest selling points of Svelte is its developer experience (which is enabled by it being a compiler). See https://svelte.dev/blog/svelte-3-rethinking-reactivity. And because only the features used in your components get included in the final bundle, the framework is free to add nice extras (like its transitions/animations system) without negatively impacting apps that don't need those extras.

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Re:Virtual DOM is pure overhead (2018) by JMTQp8lwXL on Sunday May 19, 2019 @01:51AM (#19951690)

To my understanding, one of (or the singular) author of Svelte was a developer for the NY Times who wanted to easily create visualizations with thousands of data points, and the existing UI libraries weren't cutting it on performance. Depending on the types of applications you build day-to-day, this problem space might be niche. Your standard CRUD app (tables, forms, etc) would not be leveraging Svelete's capabilities; in a sense, it could be a pre-mature optimization.

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