Solid 2.0 RC: The Big • Hacker News Board

Re: Solid 2.0 RC: The Big <Reveal>

#31

Post by ryansolid » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 9:16 PM UTC

AlexErrant wrote: post #27

I'm a little surprised that there's no mention of end-user perf and that it's not on the js-framework-benchmark. Not an accusation; just noticing the lack of emphasis (perhaps natural, given how much Solid 1.0 was famous for its speed/minimal bundle size to the point of taking over the whole conversation.)

Yeah and I always found that really unfortunate. The truth is the JS Framework Benchmark hasn't really moved more that fractions of a percentage since we first hit the mark 7 years ago. Sure many frameworks have been on their way to catch up or have matched us since, especially in the last 2 years when they started adopting our architecture. But nothing is moving the dial. We might not be the fastest on there today but I view now as a line to hold, not as a place where any measurable gains can be made.

We can throw up a JS Framework Benchmark.. I obviously tested it a bunch locally, but mostly as a regression test. I also used Octane's new benchmark suite. Same sort of conclusions though. Everyone basically doing the same thing, some with compilers and some with more manual wiring (I haven't gone in and made PRs to update those to add that to Solid implementations in theirs), to the point this isn't a contention point. It was when everyone was as slow as React. But now everyone is more or less as fast as Solid.

Bundle size there is a regression though. Its natural cost of this feature. Async everywhere, means async doesn't tree shake. Hello World went from 4.7kb to 9.8kb simply because we can't tree shake it. I'm ok with that given what we deliver. Not everyone will be I'm sure. Svelte has also grown in size similarly over the same time. Basically leaving only minimalist solutions in that ~5kb range.. ie Preact + Signals etc..

But it also isn't really an announcement headline. So it is where we are at. I guess the takeaway. Still fast, still incredibly small considering what it does.

Re: Solid 2.0 RC: The Big <Reveal>

#32

Post by terabytest » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

ryansolid wrote: post #30

terabytest wrote: post #17

As much as I’m trying to understand what’s groundbreaking here, and I’m really trying to appreciate it, the prose style of the article makes it completely impenetrable. I’m trying to understand what makes Solid 2.0 special, but I’m coming up completely empty, because it feels like I’m just reading noise.

The challenge with this is we released too much at once. I really had a hard time with this announcement because I couldn't fit a full tour in less than a 6 article series. So how do I summarize? I picked up on the async headlines and the infrastructure pieces. We talked a lot more about the new reactivity in the beta release. The plan from here as indicated in the article is a series of followups explaining parts of…

For what it's worth, I would love to read the earlier drafts before the AI workshopped them.

Re: Solid 2.0 RC: The Big <Reveal>

#33

Post by ryansolid » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #28

ryansolid wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was human written, fed to AI, human adjusted, re-fed, and around again — for days, with dozens of reviewers in between. (GPT 5.6 Sol doing the AI half of the lifting, for what it's worth.) So "nobody even looked at it" is the one criticism I can rule out. Everybody looked at it. But you aren't wrong. The marketting heavy parts are where the tone shows. And honestly those are the parts I write worst. Exactly why I…

Why do you need several human/ai iteration rounds and dozens of reviewers for a blog post?

Because it's important. You don't want to read my raw writing. Try to read my HackMD and you see what you'd get. It's always taken me a lot of work to release my medium and dev.to articles. Grammarly working hard, and multiple human editors. It scales with how many people I think will read it. A release announcement is important. It needs to be clear and it needs to convey the most information in a very short span. You don't have the privledge to meander in this sort of thing. And meandering is exactly what I'd do if left on my own.

Re: Solid 2.0 RC: The Big <Reveal>

#34

Post by ryansolid » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 9:22 PM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #29

ryansolid wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before: Anyone who has spoken to me knows I talk in run-on sentences. I never complete a thought without interrupting myself. And I write the way I talk. I used to heavily edit that out of my writing, but now AI uses the proper punctuation and fills in where I miss words. It's like what I hear in my head but better. Because it is grammatically sound. After: Anyone who's spoken to me knows I talk in run-on sentences.…

> And I write the way I talk. I used to spend whole editing passes beating that out of my drafts. What's an "editing pass"?

It's when you go top to bottom reworking parts of an article. Often later changes can impact earlier prose, so often I end up doing editing in several passes. That being said AI decided that term. It's actually more accurate to the actual process than what I originally wrote.

Re: Solid 2.0 RC: The Big <Reveal>

#35

Post by owebmaster » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 9:24 PM UTC

ryansolid wrote: post #5

genshii wrote: post #2

Maybe I just need to get over it, but this post reeks of Claude-isms and it immediately makes me stop caring about what the post has to say. Obviously having an LLM write these kinds of things is the norm now, but what doesn't have to be the norm is the writing style. The way Claude (and other popular LLMs) write is so obnoxious and verbose. I think a simple pass of "make this more terse and to the point" would do wo…

It was human written, fed to AI, human adjusted, re-fed, and around again — for days, with dozens of reviewers in between. (GPT 5.6 Sol doing the AI half of the lifting, for what it's worth.) So "nobody even looked at it" is the one criticism I can rule out. Everybody looked at it. But you aren't wrong. The marketting heavy parts are where the tone shows. And honestly those are the parts I write worst. Exactly why I…

> The marketting heavy parts are where the tone shows. And honestly those are the parts I write worst. Exactly why I lean on AI there.

Everybody using AI to write slop do so because they think they can't write better but we all prefer a bad written article to the "correct" slop we are getting nowadays.

Re: Solid 2.0 RC: The Big <Reveal>

#36

Post by jdkoeck » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 9:24 PM UTC

terabytest wrote: post #17

As much as I’m trying to understand what’s groundbreaking here, and I’m really trying to appreciate it, the prose style of the article makes it completely impenetrable. I’m trying to understand what makes Solid 2.0 special, but I’m coming up completely empty, because it feels like I’m just reading noise.

I love solid, but this article is very obviously AI-written. I too find it impenetrable.

Re: Solid 2.0 RC: The Big <Reveal>

#37

Post by AlexErrant » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 9:25 PM UTC

ryansolid wrote: post #31

AlexErrant wrote: post #27

I'm a little surprised that there's no mention of end-user perf and that it's not on the js-framework-benchmark. Not an accusation; just noticing the lack of emphasis (perhaps natural, given how much Solid 1.0 was famous for its speed/minimal bundle size to the point of taking over the whole conversation.)

Yeah and I always found that really unfortunate. The truth is the JS Framework Benchmark hasn't really moved more that fractions of a percentage since we first hit the mark 7 years ago. Sure many frameworks have been on their way to catch up or have matched us since, especially in the last 2 years when they started adopting our architecture. But nothing is moving the dial. We might not be the fastest on there today b…

A worthy and pragmatic tradeoff.

I've always appreciated Solid's DX/mental model (I _never_ have to think "when does this re-render?") so v2.0's continued wins on DX are remarkable. I never thought a release could be about how much can we _cut_. Primitives at work!

Re: Solid 2.0 RC: The Big <Reveal>

#38

Post by ryansolid » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 9:25 PM UTC

terabytest wrote: post #32

ryansolid wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge with this is we released too much at once. I really had a hard time with this announcement because I couldn't fit a full tour in less than a 6 article series. So how do I summarize? I picked up on the async headlines and the infrastructure pieces. We talked a lot more about the new reactivity in the beta release. The plan from here as indicated in the article is a series of followups explaining parts of…

For what it's worth, I would love to read the earlier drafts before the AI workshopped them.

I'm not sure you would, but I actually did this exercise a bit on stream after my last article. To try to show people what I was talking about. I actually ahve a really good example of this on some unreleased stuff that I can't talk about because its too future facing. After I write the final article I will share the other 2 versions.

Re: Solid 2.0 RC: The Big <Reveal>

#39

Post by owebmaster » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 9:26 PM UTC

threatofrain wrote: post #15

terabytest wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, did you use AI for this reply too? It reads a bit like it.

Ryan has given so much to this community... perhaps he gives too much.

Is non-AI writing too much? I don't think his projects would have got as much attention if it was AI-written since the beginning.

Re: Solid 2.0 RC: The Big <Reveal>

#40

Post by dbbk » Thu, Aug 13, 2026, 9:26 PM UTC

ryansolid wrote: post #30

terabytest wrote: post #17

As much as I’m trying to understand what’s groundbreaking here, and I’m really trying to appreciate it, the prose style of the article makes it completely impenetrable. I’m trying to understand what makes Solid 2.0 special, but I’m coming up completely empty, because it feels like I’m just reading noise.

The challenge with this is we released too much at once. I really had a hard time with this announcement because I couldn't fit a full tour in less than a 6 article series. So how do I summarize? I picked up on the async headlines and the infrastructure pieces. We talked a lot more about the new reactivity in the beta release. The plan from here as indicated in the article is a series of followups explaining parts of…

If you made the framework you should be able to write the post explaining it, sorry