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Rich Harris joins Vercel to work on Svelte full time

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Re: Rich Harris joins Vercel to work on Svelte full time

#221

Post by mikewhy »

spoils19 wrote: post #214
SparkyMcUnicorn wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't downvote, but I'll speak to my experience. First off, you don't have to go learning every framework out there. Pick one and stick with it, or just go vanilla. That said, The features these frameworks provide gives a boost in productivity that far outweighs the low learning curve. My pick was VueJS and I'm very happy with it. Using Single File Components is pretty similar to vanilla HTML/JS/CSS. Beginners tha…

Frontend developers like to change frameworks every week it seems like, so it's in my best interest to learn every framework (or at least some abstracted part of it) in order to stay employable and up-to-date. The problem is that each framework has their own abstraction and language that you have to learn. Compare it to "old-school" Java frameworks, where things were much simpler and you didn't have to worry about eg…

> Frontend developers like to change frameworks every week it seems like

This sentiment is so old and played out.

Re: Rich Harris joins Vercel to work on Svelte full time

#222

Post by bryans »

cphoover wrote: post #182

I'm tired of having to learn yet another templating language without a very compelling reason. Why do I have to learn, what is essentially, a new programming language for each of these frameworks (Angular, Svelte, Vue, React... Do I really need to learn yet another language construct for stuff like `loops`, `if/else`, event handlers...etc. Why must all of these frameworks re-invent the wheel? At least with React it i…

This is very overdramatic and isn't actually based on reality. Svelte is far closer to vanilla JS/HTML than any other framework, while also using extremely similar patterns from the other modern frameworks. Yeah, it has some sugar, but it's not just some templating system any more than React is just some templating system, and the only "unique syntax" you could be referring to is the auto-subscription to stores using $, which is super convenient.

You're acting incredibly disinformative, and have no legitimate basis for your assertions.

Re: Rich Harris joins Vercel to work on Svelte full time

#223

Post by aogaili »

Personally I have mixed feeling about this.

I guess I'm not a fan of seeing investors money expand it's control over the open source ecosystem. I like open source because it empower the little guys. But I don't expect others to share my values and perspective and perhaps Rich Harris turns out to be a robinhood. Why not doing something like the creator of Vue? With that said I look forward to see what comes out of their shop. Good luck :)

Re: Rich Harris joins Vercel to work on Svelte full time

#224

Post by slantyyz »

DonHopkins wrote: post #217

I've been following Svelte, and it sounded great, so I've wanted to use it for some time. Now I've finally started a project with SvelteKit, and it's even better than I hoped, with extra layers of greatness I didn't even realize, like pre-rendering pages, at the same time as being very mobile SPA friendly.

My favorite feature of Sveltekit is probably the server-side endpoints. It's so easy to create an API using them.

Re: Rich Harris joins Vercel to work on Svelte full time

#225

Post by cakoose »

spoils19 wrote: post #204
dceddia wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thought process was, if I’m gonna have to rewrite the app, I may as well use the web dev skills I already have, so that at least the UI work will be in my wheelhouse. Rust is new to me, as is low-level ffmpeg stuff, both of which I’ve had to learn from scratch. I learned Swift in order to build the Mac app, and I know from that experience that building custom UI controls while learning a new ecosystem slowed me do…

Sounds like an easier process for you, but at the cost of your users. This proliferation of web tooling when it clearly doesn't suit the environment (desktop) is part of the reason why our software is getting slower, even as our hardware is improving.

Not always at the cost of the users?

If dceddia is able to add features and fixes more quickly, that's good for users too.

And if Svelte on the desktop becomes popular, people will likely come up with more efficient options. For example, a more efficient Electron or something like "Svelte Native", which could be a good thing.

I'd love if all software were more efficient, but getting up to speed on a new platform has a huge opportunity cost too.

Re: Rich Harris joins Vercel to work on Svelte full time

#226

Post by sanitycheck »

rich_harris wrote: post #147
sxiao wrote: post #118

Am I the only one? Next just bought its biggest upcoming competitor—SvelteKit. Next is the best that React has to offer but it still has flaws. Svelte and SvelteKit are so awesome you cannot believe it before you've built something bigger and so much ahead of the entire React ecosystem. We migrated a huge/complex React app in a month and the difference is night and day (performance/bundle size/dev productivity). Reac…

I understand this perspective! But as anyone who knows me will tell you, I would be the worst person in the world to try and build a business around Svelte. As others have said, the expectations from investors would make it far less likely that Svelte could remain a community-centric project. It's important to clarify that Vercel (which has earned its open source bona fides) hasn't 'bought' Svelte or SvelteKit. It's…

Congrats on the job, Rich! I've been using Svelte, Typescript & Babel in the past couple of months to build a set of TV apps targeting some fairly slow and ancient devices and it's been brilliant. Totally impossible to do that with React, I do know some people who tried it though.

Re: Rich Harris joins Vercel to work on Svelte full time

#227

Post by dceddia »

spoils19 wrote: post #204
dceddia wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thought process was, if I’m gonna have to rewrite the app, I may as well use the web dev skills I already have, so that at least the UI work will be in my wheelhouse. Rust is new to me, as is low-level ffmpeg stuff, both of which I’ve had to learn from scratch. I learned Swift in order to build the Mac app, and I know from that experience that building custom UI controls while learning a new ecosystem slowed me do…

Sounds like an easier process for you, but at the cost of your users. This proliferation of web tooling when it clearly doesn't suit the environment (desktop) is part of the reason why our software is getting slower, even as our hardware is improving.

Being very conscious of those downsides, I'm putting in extra effort to make sure it's fast. So far it seems to be working!

It uses less CPU than any other Electron-based video apps I've seen (and even less than a few Qt-based editors I tried) and it feels snappy.

I think tools like Figma have shown what's possible when enough attention is paid to performance early on – but yeah, it's one of my main worries with going with Electron and I'm trying to avoid the downsides as much as I'm able.

The ones I have less control over are memory usage and disk space. I'd love to get those down but it seems like that'd require digging into Chromium and ripping things out. Which, honestly, I looked at doing, but that code base is a beast and I'd rather get something into peoples' hands sooner.

On a related note: I think there's a real opportunity for an "Electron Lite", like some kind of custom Electron/Chromium build that turns off stuff you don't need. I suspect it could help disk usage + memory usage + startup time. Chromium's build system has lots of flags that make it seem like you can turn things off. But it didn't work that way when I tried, so I think it probably requires source-level changes, which then means maintaining those patches across Chromium updates etc. But really, though: I don't need WebRTC, or printing, or media codecs, or probably a zillion other things. It'd be so cool to be able to turn those things off at will.

Re: Rich Harris joins Vercel to work on Svelte full time

#228

Post by [deleted] »

spoils19 wrote: post #214
SparkyMcUnicorn wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't downvote, but I'll speak to my experience. First off, you don't have to go learning every framework out there. Pick one and stick with it, or just go vanilla. That said, The features these frameworks provide gives a boost in productivity that far outweighs the low learning curve. My pick was VueJS and I'm very happy with it. Using Single File Components is pretty similar to vanilla HTML/JS/CSS. Beginners tha…

Frontend developers like to change frameworks every week it seems like, so it's in my best interest to learn every framework (or at least some abstracted part of it) in order to stay employable and up-to-date. The problem is that each framework has their own abstraction and language that you have to learn. Compare it to "old-school" Java frameworks, where things were much simpler and you didn't have to worry about eg…

[deleted]

Re: Rich Harris joins Vercel to work on Svelte full time

#229

Post by miguel-muniz »

dexwiz wrote: post #25
systemvoltage wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Vue because I come from a bygone era of HTML + sprinkling jQuery as needed. 99% of the websites don't need a full blown JS frontend but everyone is doing it, I must be wrong.

Do you work with a designer? I’m convinced most of the push for JS apps as pages is mostly perpetuated by designers who don’t know how the DOM works and feel the need to redesign the wheel on every project. I work within a company that provides a design system and a platform of hundreds of generic component, but individual designers still always want to push their particular vision. I think if most designers took exi…

Do the designers you work with have experience with front-end development, or have access to your design system in their design tools?

It sounds like an issue that can be resolved with some communication

Re: Rich Harris joins Vercel to work on Svelte full time

#230

Post by kall »

hijodelsol wrote: post #210
cphoover wrote: post #182

I'm tired of having to learn yet another templating language without a very compelling reason. Why do I have to learn, what is essentially, a new programming language for each of these frameworks (Angular, Svelte, Vue, React... Do I really need to learn yet another language construct for stuff like `loops`, `if/else`, event handlers...etc. Why must all of these frameworks re-invent the wheel? At least with React it i…

For me Vue 3 with get's pretty close to pure JavaScript/TypeScript. 90% of the code will be exactly like JS code, the only difference being the use of computed(), ref() and reactive() to achieve (something JS simply doesn't provide but is necessary for every non-trivial application). Your HTML code and CSS code are not mixed with JS and look and feel like the real thing as well. Other than the reactivity indication a…

Are we still taking about vue ? I don‘t see how that is any way close to html when it has: custom conditional and loop syntax and semantics, arbitrary js expressions and a unique concept of scope?
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