Is React Dying Because of Svelte-Which one is better?

Frameworks provide users with the easiest way to develop their web applications with least amount of coding. From many years React, Vue and Angular are the trusted names in this field and are used widely in many applications. But from about 2 years, a new framework Svelte has become a well-known name. It has become a matter of discussion that can Svelte take place of React in framework world. Let’s discuss Svelte vs React. What these two frameworks are, what are their applications, and their point-to-point differences.

What is React?

It is a JavaScript library that is dedicated to front-end development. React mainly focuses on building user interfaces easily. It makes use of reusable components. React.js was first created by Facebook in 2011 for their use and has been maintained by them till now. It was made available to open-source community just two years ago and has gained much popularity. React allows quick rendering of web page making it more search engine friendly. This framework has a wide range of developer communities with over 150k GitHub developers.

React is widely used as it is easy to learn, provides faster development and moreover it provides the facility of Virtual DOM which increases the performance of this framework to great extent. It mainly focuses on view layer from model, view and controller architecture.

What is Svelte?

Svelte is a component framework that resembles a compiler. It generates small plain JavaScript code as small as possible to make the application tiny and fast. It also ensures proper optimization. Svelte was launched in 2016, based on React and Vue. It was created by Rich Horris and is maintained by Svelte’s core members. It reduces the overhead code required by Svelte apps. Svelte was declared the most loved framework in Stack Overflow survey 2021 with 71.42%, while React had 69.28%. In the State of JS survey 2020, it was loved by 89% of developers, while React is second with 88%.

It provides us with the facility of automatic updates of user interface data, no complex code syntax like JSX of react. It gives the facility of directly updating real DOM and therefore requires no virtual DOM, which increases its efficiency. This framework has just started to develop and is not completely mature, but has huge scope for growth.

Usage of Svelte and React

React is used in Web applications, media sites, video streaming platforms, mobile applications, desktop applications, progressive web applications, JAM stack sites, etc. Many major applications, such as PayPal, BBC, Facebook, Netflix, Twitter has used React.js.

Svelte is mainly used for single-page websites, applications requiring video visualization, web applications for low internet speed requirements, and web applications for low-intensity devices. It has a network of about 3,151 live websites. TeamSpeak, Houses of World, Doka by PQINA, Tableplop are some applications of this framework.

Virtual DOM vs No Virtual DOM

React uses virtual code to interpret application code during runtime. It generates some overhead code in browser’s JavaScript engine. It will monitor and manage the updates in DOM. This virtual DOM look out the updates and make suitable changes in real DOM by the best method available. A Virtual DOM is a virtual representation of Document Object Model (DOM). It acts as a temporary container that manages all changes in user interface. If we had to deal directly with real DOM, then every change would be called an update. It will severely degrade performance.

Svelte, on other hand, is like a compiler. It translates your application into JavaScript code. Svelte does not possess any virtual DOM. It prevents any overhead code while DOM is running. Svelte updates the real DOM directly whenever user input changes the applications. It directly interprets the code during build time, instead of runtime. This interpretation of code reduces the overall overhead of code and makes changes in real DOM more significantly. Hence, it increases performance of application.

Svelte vs React: Which is Easy to learn?

Learning React is a little bit tuff aspect due to presence of JSX (an XML syntax to JavaScript) and CSS-in-JS like stuffs. It requires such complex components in the most basic applications also.

Svelte does not use any such tuff components. It can also be performed with basic knowledge of CSS, JavaScript and HTML. It also introduces only a few extensions to HTML and JavaScript. Svelte reduces the difficulty and requirement of coding knowledge.

According to StackOverflow Most Loved vs. Dreaded section newcomer Svelte takes the top spot as the most loved framework.

Ease of development experience

React mainly focuses on view layer. It is very lightweight library and requires third party tools for better development. It requires tools for state management, animations creation etc. But it is not always a bad thing when dealing with small projects.

Svelte has built in effects, transitions and animations which reduces the need of third-party tools. It only calls the required part of inbuilt code. It also have various options to deal with state management like context API, Svelte Stores, Writable Stores, Readable stores etc.

Which is more lightweighted library?

Svelte is comparatively more lightweighted library as compared to React. It’s Gzipped version is of 1.6 KB size, while of React is 42.2 KB. The main reason of Svelte being lightweighted is absence of Virtual DOM. Being more light weighted increases the performance of applications as it reduces application loading time. Also, responsiveness is flawless and bandwidth costs are lowered.

Conclusion

We have listed out all the main differences between both the frameworks. But your selection of framework will mainly depend on your type of usage, as every framework has its pros and cons. Svelte is easy, more light weighted, and have better performance. But it lacks a rich community as it was launched recently, which can reduce your ability to perform specific practices. But, react has its own place in world of development. For now, Svelte will have to go a long way to be able to try to replace React. It was all about svelte vs react. I hope you enjoyed it!!

Which feature of Svelte vs React is more significant for your usage? Tell us in comments below.