Comment by rictic
1 day ago
The system described in the article is very React-like, and could be used by future versions of React. In both, functions return a description of HTML to render, which can be applied either to create new HTML or to update previously rendered HTML.
I skimmed part of it, but unless I missed some huge caveat I think you’re backwards and GP is definitely right. The article mentions React, then sort of dismisses it later saying the other two strategies are better to implement instead of diffing.
I don’t see any reason a browser level “here’s new DOM you diff and apply it” couldn't exist and be a huge win for React and other libraries, with React so much more popular than every other framework combined, and that being a pretty low level API, it makes sense to start there.
Building the overly abstracted thing first is a mistake web API authors have made too many times (see web components).
I still have hope for Web Components to take off in the figure. I'm a React dev so I don't "need" them, but they may end up being some kind of capability that React can secretly, quietly embed into React core as some kind of optimization if that ever makes sense. Web Components is a great idea, but like I said it's just not quite as convenient as React, so it's currently somewhat irrelevant at least for me.