by troupo | 2025-09-03 20:42:17+00:00
> The entire idea of writing fake HTML that gets parsed, compiled, and interpreted in JavaScript to manipulate the DOM at runtime is wrong.

Because there's nothing in the web standards to do it otherwise.

> The concept of a virtual DOM, diffing, reconciliation, and a bunch of related nonsense, is wrong.

Of the frameworks I mentioned none use virtual DOM or diffing. They have all moved to a much more efficient way that is, guess what, on a way to become a native browser standard: https://github.com/tc39/proposal-signals

> The insanity of an entire ecosystem of tools built around solving client-side state management.

Any time you have a dynamic UI, you have state management. I wish the web remained static, but that ship has sailed long ago. And there's nothing in web standards that helps with state management.

> It just means that the field has become dominated by influencer developers, to the point that junior developers entering the field are not aware of other ways of building web applications.

It's strange how you completely dismissed Solid, Vue, and Svelte which all offer a different way to build web apps when compared to React, for example.

> JavaScript in web browsers is a stable, modern language.

You need more than just a language. You also need libraries and actual useful functionality exposed by the browsers.

Literally the whole reason so many libraries and frameworks have popped over the years, is because no one wants to spend time writing hundreds of lines of code just to properly set up and change some DOM element. And the reason very few libs/frameworks (even newcomers) use "the amazing new features in the browsers" is because these features have a list of features issues and caveats a mile long. Here's just one single example: https://x.com/Rich_Harris/status/1841467510194843982

> HTML has received numerous transformative updates over the years, such as the `template` element we're discussing here.

And what, pray tell, does template give you? On its own it's useless. You need some JS to manipulate it, at least.

> but because it takes a first principles approach and rejects building on top of the existing pile of abstractions.

Didn't you just say this: "The entire idea of writing fake HTML that gets parsed, compiled, and interpreted in JavaScript to manipulate the DOM at runtime is wrong. "?

What do you think Datastar is doing if not literally the same thing. How do you think this works:

<div data-signals="{counter: 0, message: 'Hello World', allChanges: [], counterChanges: []}"> <div class="actions"> <button data-on-click="$message = `Updated: ${performance.now().toFixed(2)}`"> Update Message </button> <button data-on-click="$counter++"> Increment Counter </button> <button class="error" data-on-click="$allChanges.length = 0; $counterChanges.length = 0" > Clear All Changes </button> </div> <div> <h3>Current Values</h3> <p>Counter: <span data-text="$counter"></span></p> <p>Message: <span data-text="$message"></span></p> </div> <div data-on-signal-patch="$counterChanges.push(patch)" data-on-signal-patch-filter="{include: /^counter$/}" > <h3>Counter Changes Only</h3> <pre data-json-signals__terse="{include: /^counterChanges/}"></pre> </div> <div data-on-signal-patch="$allChanges.push(patch)" data-on-signal-patch-filter="{exclude: /allChanges|counterChanges/}" > <h3>All Signal Changes</h3> <pre data-json-signals__terse="{include: /^allChanges/}"></pre> </div> </div>

It does (ab)use the browser for the preliminary parsing, but then it does what everyone else does (only probably worse). E.g. by literally parsing attribute contents to reimplement half of Javascript for "reactive expressions": https://github.com/starfederation/datastar/blob/develop/libr...