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Comment by docmars

3 days ago

Anything that forces React off its boring throne of forced ubiquity is a good thing in my book, not only for its lack of optimization, but its unwillingness to move past its outdated APIs and state management patterns. The amount of limitations I've faced using it compared to other libraries / ecosystem is enough to drive anyone mad.

I will say these claims about 10-second load times are highly exaggerated though. I've built several large applications with Vue and React, and once compiled, load within 2-3 seconds, with any remaining time spent requesting data at the mercy of your servers, which is going to happen in any client-side application, including native apps; so this isn't browser technology's fault.

Once cached, loads instantly -- and anyone complaining about cold starts can take their criticism to native app makers for phones, or motherboard manufacturers for long boot times. It's hardly an issue because of caching, and I tend to think the complainers about the modern web are forgetting how much more complex our applications are these days. Raw speed for lack of features? Or a little bloat for more capabilities? Pick one, and accept the tradeoffs. Maybe one day browser tech won't force us to choose.

While there is a case to be made for slow internet connections (this is where Svelte and other compiled runtimes come in with SSR), for the average enterprise using a private SaaS, or home internet customers using public SaaS apps on the web, by-and-large the experience is going to be just fine, unless the team who built the app didn't optimize.

All that aside, it's refreshing to see more ground being broken in the area of speed — I'm all for it.