It was very disappointing to see Svelte 5 go the way of React. Yes, yes, I understand that it theoretically simplifies things and yadda yadda yadda, but after trying to actually use it, it felt like I was just using React with a much smaller ecosystem.

Svelte 4 felt awesome because it felt like I was just writing an HTML file, sure there was some magic ($:) but for the most part things were simple, easy to understand, and it all just worked. Runes totally changed that, maybe for the better because of all of the things previously cited, but not for my personal experience. I'll stop there because I'm 100% covering already-treaded ground.

I'm "joining the dark side" by trying the HTMX & Golang combo, just to see if I can hack together an on-par DX (which is going to be a herculean task, I know).