The Future of Svelte (Interview with Rich Harris)

[@roastgg]

This was a brilliant move by Vercel, and we in the community are thankful for it. Svelte is the future.

[@blankslate6393]

Svelte is just a better product than React/Vue/Angular in every sense (elegance, ease of use, speed, size). The best analogy is given by Rich himself Svelte is electric motor compared to internal combustion engines of the big 3. Svelte will easily surpass them if ecosystem grows and more developers get on board. I'm particularly keen to see Sveltekit 1.0. Thanks Vercel for hiring Rich and by doing so supporting this hidden gem of JS world.

[@pixel7038]

I’m more curious on the future with next.js and svelte

[@arwahsapi]

and it's created by a graphics editor working at the New York Times

[@vishcanaran5139]

Yes, thanks, Vercel and Rich. One of the reasons we are using Vercel is Svelte and Rich joining the team. We have jumped all in on Svelte and Svelte-Kit for our products at Liquid Analytics. DX is everything.

[@oskrm]

@@vishcanaran5139 How is sveltekit in production? I'm using it but in limited side projects

[@heroe1486]

Why is Vue always listed with Angular and React ? Both have a trillion dollar company backing them up, both have around 40-50 percent job marketshare, I guess Vue is in between Svelte and those 2.

[@mentoriii3475]

So this is what Erlich Bachman has been doing since he disappeared, he was building Svelte

[@pranav666]

Underrated comment

[@skollskollskoll]

Lmaooo

[@obey_giant]

Lmfao I was thinking the same thing 😭🫣

[@ronvoluted]

With two days to go, we are witnessing the future of the future of Svelte right now.

[@ChumX100]

Exciting times indeed.

[@emberchord]

One of the things that is just sooo important to me, is that those of us that write CSS still get to write actual CSS. That means writing selectors, cascade layers, container queries, transitions, scoping, nesting etc.

[@Troy-ol5fk]

I like how svelte has built-in transitions out of the box

[@mhmmdshaz98]

Yes. Just makes things painless.

[@heybran_]

您在中国大陆吗？如果是，我想咨询下，目前国内使用svelte的公司多吗？

[@Dev-Siri]

​@@heybran_are you using a vpn or something to connect to KZbin?

[@mryechkin]

That was great! It's always so interesting to hear Rich talk about web. Super happy to hear about him joining the team, exciting times ahead! And so many points you touched on re: open-source maintenance hit the nail on the head. Would love to see more informal interview-style videos like this :)

[@TheOldPaulMcBride]

Lee's webcam setup absolutely slaps

[@ximono]

As a non-native English speaker, this always makes me laugh: "You wanna kick things off by introducing yourself?" "Sure! I'm rich. I've been at Vercel for the last three weeks."

[@mohmin8226]

😂

[@misterjaypeasmith]

😂

[@--Arthur]

😂

[@xq_nemesis]

😂

[@CrusiobTV]

😂

[@sean_reyes]

1. Rust Svelte Compiler ❤️

[@FilipeFreire]

Good questions Lee! Really on point, probably the best interview on Svelte I've watched. Cheers!

[@kthxbye1132]

Thank you for speaking out loud about burning out!

[@mkvalor]

I'm so happy that Rich addressed the scalability concern starting at 17:00 . I was shocked to learn in the "Getting Started With Svelte" tutorial by John Papa (September '21) that, for the same app with 50 components (by no means gigantic) in four different frameworks, the Svelte version bundle size equivalent was almost the same as for the Angular, React, and Vue versions. A naive projection would have that app at twice the size of the others if 100 components were included. It turns out that starting with a large shared "blob" of framework code can mean that each component you add to the project contributes much less to the final size (as a percentage of the total). So I'm looking forward to seeing how the Svelte brain trust figures out how to keep the simplicity and lightweight nature of the framework while also addressing this concern.

[@blackbird5199]

This is a very good point. Also recently found that out, actually you can find the articles addressing the issue which are 2-3 years old. The solution is using code splitting, which you would do to a big app anyway with any library these days.

[@erickmoya1401]

Watching this 1 year late doesnt make it less amazing and exciting. Svelte 4 came out a few weeks ago and things are getting even better.

[@vaniad555]

Thank you for creating Svelte!

[@StarOnCheek]

HOW did nobody know he also created rollup??? That's like, mad respect

[@jeffmchale5826]

This was a really informative chat. Thanks for this! Can't wait to see what Svelte and SvelteKit become. Enjoying the Svelte ecosystem.

[@iuriibudnikov7333]

Hey guys, thank you for your hard work! I'm working with svelte and svelkit more then year. I'm impressed how it works. Appreciated!

[@mrgerbeck]

Vercel can support Next & Svelte and more because the end goal is hosting--so pushing the space forward and being closer to the developer is a good strategy.

[@IamSH1VA]

Yesterday I used svelte for the first time, & I am loving it 😻. Thank you Jesus 👏🏻🙏

[@blocSonic]

Interesting discussion. Looking forward to see where SvelteKit goes.

[@ricardocnn]

Sveltekit has one giant advantage. It has its own library

[@LebaneseNostalgia]

Hopefully Svelte takes over react in the coming two years :P

[@Eldalion99999]

man what a future that would be...........react infestation is the biggest tragedy that ever happened to us

[@denniszenanywhere]

@@Eldalion99999 I like your choice of words. :-)

[@Ricardoromero4444]

In two years time? Unlikely. But I do hope it eventually happens

[@abdurrahmanabu-hijleh6963]

@@Eldalion99999 why is it a tragedy?

[@Elijah_Lopez]

It'll take 5. I just found out about how awesome svelte is. And I learned react in 2020!

[@cebuanoninoy]

Does Svelte have a preferred third party state management like Redux on React? Or is native state management would be fine? Sorry for this newbie question here.

[@dangelomedina3091]

state management in svelte is native.

[@tsrcodes]

Svelte Stores...

[@z-aru]

@@dangelomedina3091 I was thinking when reading your comment and then realized lmao, you are right it's technically native

[@ytadi9229]

you don't need third party state management option

[@victorsousa8955]

Svelte Context and Svelte Stores

[@macieksitkowski]

Great interview, it was really fun to listen to you guys, thanks!

[@shawn_bullock]

All I can say is we have a React app that has a certain amount of productivity predictability that holds true for every dev we've ever hired. Even very experienced React devs we hired seem to be in the same ballpark (with our app). When we played around with Svelte we found our productivity x * 4 easily. Simply because we're not running Google queries based on "How to do x?" "... with React" "... with hooks" "... React component that does x" With Svelte is just "how do to x?" and that's it

[@albertjunior6832]

Finally i found the language i like, that is SVELTE

[@kayodealao]

If Svelte is a web framework, should we not expect Svelte for mobile?

[@AmxCsifier]

There is svelte native I think, where you can create mobile apps, not sure about it though

[@Antonio-fo4fl]

I believe Rich said for now they are focusing on Web but since svelte is a compiler they could potentially look into making things like Svelte-native more builtin but not 100% on that stuff yet.

[@AmxCsifier]

@finance If you say so, I didn't try it anyway

[@nullpointer1755]

@water could you explain why?

[@sean_reyes]

I just hope Svelte will concentrate more on Forms. it’s has more use than motions, MVP’s doesn’t really have that many motions depending on what you’re creating…

[@marijnstapert9036]

Don't think the core framework will ever implement form validation. There is a package for this that recently got updated, haven't tried it tho.

[@alichamas63]

Dude, build your own thats chump stuff.

[@sean_reyes]

@@alichamas63 I'm not asking it as a feature for v4... maybe sooner v9 or something... but hey, I'm just hoping for it, I was not demanding that they should...

[@anupjoseph7368]

I believe that's kind of the point? Like most MVPs would like to have some motion in them, but are deterred by the fact that you have to use something like say Framer Motion in React and deal with all the costs associated with it, while it's dirt cheap in Svelte, like you don't have to use motion, but if you want to its just there. Having said that I'll admit it would be nice to have form validation inbuilt. Maybe not in Svelte itself, but as a module in SvelteKit perhaps?

[@yaboirairai]

@@anupjoseph7368 just curious, what are the perceived costs of using framer motion?

[@petecapecod]

Personally I had a interview with a technical recruiter at Meta like 6 weeks ago and I brought up that I had been using it in open source work. He seemed cool with it 👍🏻

[@padraiccunningham3790]

Why not write the compiler using Go?

[@kamaboko1]

Svelte rocks🤟

[@Eldalion99999]

thank you for saving frontend development. Its infested with react hypelords to the roots and I almost gave up hope.

[@diegosk8bt]

Why you guys did not mention the VUEjs project as a successful community driven open source project?

[@sontiyo7113]

vue3 came and fucked it up lowkey

[@AbdelhakNASSEUR]

i have used svelte and sveltekit for the past month building two projects with it. i could deliver a lot more than i would normally with nextjs and react. eventhough i think next is wonderful tool sveltekit feels reacts better if could put things this way

[@vikashprajapati8077]

For a second in thumbnail I considered Rich Harris as Peter Mckinnon

[@jafar1607]

What about angular? Things that svelt is discussing about implementing were included in angular from day one. Anybody plz. What's is wrong with angular that people don't even mention it...??

[@MarkVolkmann]

Verbosity, complexity, steep learning curve, …

[@alexandrepedroza9217]

Angular's performance is bad even when compared to react. When compared to svelte, angular is basically as fast as a dead turtle 🐢

[@jerry9548]

As someone who learned both I can tell you that Angular is incredibly hard learn and has too much boilerplate code. I don‘t like Angular but I use it at work. Svelte was very different. Almost everything made sense from the start. Angular‘s only big advantages are it‘s adoption and integrated ecosystem which eliminates decision fatigue especially in big teams. But Svelte is (personal opinion) better in every other regard and it‘s catching up with Angular.

[@darkbluewalther]

At this point I'm just wondering why any framework could not have both: an easy learning curve / simple syntax from Svelte/Vue, and an "all-batteries-included" philosophy from Angular. I hate using my time finding 15 packages I need to build a simple app, and the plumbing to make them work together. Sometimes I feel I'm the only one who prefers building features to plumbing. That's why I never used React. And on the back-end side, I favor old MVC frameworks like Django or Rails to build stuff without reinventing the wheel.

[@johanrg70]

Some of us absolutely do prefer to use Angular. It's a great framework, it's not slower than react and it has everything you need included from the get go. I'm extremely productive in it and prefer it over react. I never had a hard time picking up Angular, for me it was relatively easy to learn the basics and expand my knowledge over time. I do wonder how much programming experience people who claim it's so hard to learn really has, because it's really not that hard for a seasoned programmer to pick up.

[@workflowinmind]

LFG Vercel x Svelte ❤️

[@julianacosta5936]

Unrelated - What camera is Lee using? Is it a DSLR?

[@anton_adelaide]

Using a framework only speeds things up in the beginning. It then becomes an obstacle as the application needs more fine-tuning and as new major versions of the framework are shipped. Take any project that’s more than a few years old and you’ll identify the problem I outlined above almost in 100% of the cases.

[@xman6267]

So what's the solution?

[@yp5387]

@@xman6267 lots of pain. There is no easy things once you expand your project after certain level. People love svelte because mostly they are using in their personal project where everything is under control. all of this scaling issues occurs when large team is working on the same project. Specially when people are moving in and out.

[@BarisPalabiyik]

Can't wait

[@TannerBarcelos]

Svelte is the future. It is that amazing (Core and Kit)

[@thomasbrettell]

Awesome talk

[@predaytor]

Is Svelte compare to React SPA transitions?

[@shawnlee6775]

?

[@predaytor]

@@shawnlee6775 like how fast page (route change) transitions. Is Svelte a SPA?

[@linkinl1]

@@predaytor Svelte is a single page application in its core (so really fast routing) but it also have server side rendering and hydration

[@smithshelke2036]

This is the best intro. I am rich

[@timroth9606]

The future of Svelte: 280 job positions are open in the whole US right now. Isn't it wonderful?

[@isdeonf]

React is almost 10 years old and is backed by one of the most valuable companies in the world. Give Svelte some time.

[@ritwik5774]

I don't know whether you're trying to make a positive or negative point here, but that's nothing other than encouraging for svelte, given the dearth of community libraries and the lack of a framework.

[@ritwik5774]

@Alik Sargsyan I'll take you seriously when you back up your "fact" with facts.

[@Xaero324]

@@ritwik5774I don't think Svelte is for everyone. Just because something new is touted as "faster" and "simpler" that doesn't also equate to the best solution for your app. I use Vue and do admit the learning curve is higher than Svelte, but some of that complexity is because it does more things than Svelte probably does which is like component inheritance. Correct me if I'm wrong but I do not see that feature highlighted on Svelte. For small projects that's extremely simple or for even beginners to JS... Svelte seems a solid choice.

[@willinton06]

@Alik Sargsyan at some point flash was the tool for graphics on the web, things change, fast

[@videosforthegoodlife2253]

+1 for rewrite in rust

[@ryanleemartin7758]

"maybe it would make sense if the svelte compiler was written in Rust". Yes..yasssss.. make it so. let the Rust takeover continue!

[@zummon]

Before I knew Svelte, I was learning React and Vue. Not sure it's wasted of time. I should not say this. And now I'm afraid of newer better tech, and need to learn new things again.

[@rand0mtv660]

Not a waste of time. Learning any framework is not a waste of time because you will still get some knowledge no matter what. One thing that I would say is that learning programming in general and learning JavaScript is even better than just learning frameworks. Having those fundamentals helps a lot while learning frameworks.

[@mentoriii3475]

I really want svelte to succeed but let's be honest, now that React is building it's own compiler, it's not going anywhere anytime soon

[@StevenAkinyemi]

It's not just about compilation though. React is relatively harder to learn and it has too much boilerplate.

[@isdeonf]

The compiler will not change much until they drop Virtual DOM and their infinite amounts of verbose hooks.

[@georgeokello8620]

Let's not forget the complications react added with concurrent mode that really kills of the way hooks are utilized in useEffect() to track state management of v Dom. Not to mention that they introduced this feature as a way to fight off the fundamental flaw of their v Dom utilization for updating trees which tends to get extremely inefficient especially with the need to have to write more Javascript to fight tackle that problem that eventually leads to creating larger bundles.

[@vizunaldth]

awesome-sauce

[@leopb21]

Try to implement a regular list that renders an array of 200 component instances as rows. Do that in React and then in Svelte. You will understand why Svelte is better. No work arounds like "memo" to make things performant. After this try to subscribe the array content to a global store variable for reactivity, try to implement a sort or filter. React simply fails to keep things running smoothly. And this is just a simple example for a super common use case in web development, a dynamic list.

[@hhskladby1596]

Resembling the British Agricultural Revolution by Jethro Tull

[@gxtoast2221]

Elm's compiled JavaScript runtime code is significantly smaller than the uncompiled code written by humans.

[@grzywn]

I didn't know that David Guetta is a programmer...

[@balasuar]

So NYT journalists produced at least 2 awesome technologies I'm aware of: D3 and now Svelte. BA.

[@technosujeet]

When he said I'm rich 😂😂😂

[@erickmoya1401]

Rich: "If a good tool existed to solved a problem, there would be no need for other tools" The 100 new frameworks of javascript this week: "am I a joke to you?"

[@djha1257]

I decide to move to svelte. Because developer is handsome so it is reliable

[@AlJey007]

I do not believe that Svelte and React are competitors at all (everything else just sucks at this point). And yes, they do solve similar problems, but in vastly different ways. And even philosophically, both ideas have merit and open up possibilities that no other tool can provide. The fact that most people do not utilize all that potential is a different topic entirely. It is a genius move on Vercels part to hire Rich. In fact, I am really surprised that no other company has snatched him already by now. Especially Google, with their embarrassment of a framework, or Facebook, or even Microsoft.

[@leopet6815]

What embarrassment? Flutter?

[@AlJey007]

@@leopet6815 Angular

[@leopet6815]

@@AlJey007 Wow! I did not know that. But I guess it's what we'd use if there was no react or vue...it still holds a big job share

[@ritwik5774]

Contradicting yourself a bit by saying they "solve similar problems" but aren't competitors.

[@AlJey007]

@@ritwik5774 similar does not mean the same, no tool is perfect for every scenario, and, sometimes, the journey is just as important as the destination

[@loia5tqd001]

Are you Rich? Yes I am, but not quite though

[@jerrygreenest]

"Hello, I'm rich" :)

[@ThomazMartinez]

I still much prefer { true ? 'yes' : 'no' } make this happen please

[@josephwong2832]

cool

[@galangaidil9421]

"How do i add CSS to my project" hahaha😅

[@SmartWizzard]

Rich is rich with blond & Black hair ;)

[@shaizeik]

Didn’t know Jesus was a front end guy

[@ximono]

Not just that, he prefers JavaScript

[@krido6396]

What the hell dude 😂😂

[@mr.actapus4069]

Blaspheme

[@juliocanares]

ASASAS

[@lemokami]

At last I found JESUS

[@biskitpagla]

"i'm rich" bro stop flexing 😭

[@shortsupply4760]

why does rich harris look like the guy from the witcher?

[@rand0mtv660]

1:40 "You know React was not yet the thing that everyone had to do"...I like Rich, but a lot of the time he has this attitude like "Svelte is really great and everything else you are using you made a bad choice and is not that great blah blah...". Like Svelte is this godsend tool or whatever. Svelte is cool, but Rich really needs to stop promoting it by putting others down at the same time. You can see the same approach in his talks. I'm quite sure many of his decisions for the libraries he made was by observing what others have done right and wrong so without those other people, his tools probably wouldn't be here where they are. I like his honesty, but with the influence he has he might have to pick his words a bit better.

[@blackbird5199]

On the other hand, the primary reason why he had to create his own tool was a critical weight of disadvantages of existing tools. To explain why Svelte is good, you can't avoid emphasizing why other tools are bad.

[@rand0mtv660]

@@blackbird5199 Yeah, I do understand that you sometimes have to compare tools in order to explain why you think something is better, but he just needs to stop with React comparisons all the time. It's getting boring already because he's been doing it for 2-3 years probably. He can just market Svelte as a great tool on its own without having to compare it to React in every single sentence he says.

[@MikePeiman]

​@@rand0mtv660 I understand your preference, but it's not practical. React is the de facto industry standard; the entire purpose of a standard is for comparison. It is necessary for him to compare Svelte to React (to the standard) - to evaluate it in terms of performance or preference as well as to explain it, or aspects of it (explanation = the conveying of understanding). Comparison for similarities and differences is an essential method for all of these uses: evaluating, understanding, and explaining.

[@manashejmadi]

I mean he’s right. React is garbage. It’s a tragedy that it’s used so much

[@mrgerbeck]

Clearly not working 2 full time jobs is about money. One of the full time jobs goes away and focus is directed towards the main project when there is funding.

[@philip9677]

what is vercel and what is svelte

[@jasonsebring3983]

Wait he just said why he joined... "I'm Rich..."

[@benabitbol7767]

some days you wont ever need any of those framework, in a near future. people have to stop building new framework every week

[@piyushmahapatra5402]

and I'm Poor :(

[@SinhNguyen-tz6us]

We should call him Rick Hairy :)

[@_the_one_1]

Pff Rich Harris again! This dude is everywhere in front of my screen yelling at me to literally drop everything and start learning Sveltekit or whatever he presents!

[@MrEnsiferum77]

Better than starting learning svelte, learn CQRS and observability... and u will be free from modern frameworks, telling u this is the new way of building things...

[@alexanderveprik3331]

Must obey! 🤣

[@oskrm]

@@MrEnsiferum77 Abandon everything. Learn Assembly. Anything above is an abstraction framework. Be free.

[@MrEnsiferum77]

@@oskrm like the frameworks solves your problem. Just introduces new one and your domain logic is stuck there. Server less is nothing more than cqrs if u know how to use it.

[@hhskladby1596]

To me he always yells "Use your brain to know what you need for your special purpose". Of course maybe too long for some to grasp it fully.

[@ghostloadgg]

Launch an NFT for open source funding... can be a handful of perks tied to it and provide a lot of liquidity to the project!