Rich Harris - Svelte and Defending the Modern Web

Episode details

In this episode, Adam talks to Rich Harris about Svelte, and why we should keep pushing forward with the modern web even if it's not perfect yet.

Topics include:

• What is Svelte and how is it different than other JS frameworks in the space?
• What special behavior does the Svelte compiler layer on top of vanilla JS syntax and why?
• Why the lack of render functions in Svelte isn't a real problem in practice
• What are you giving up when you choose to build your application with something like Rails instead of JavaScript?
• Why should we be trying to write our applications in a single language, and why should it be JS?
• What's wrong with striving to write an application entirely in a language like Ruby instead of entirely in JS?
• Why HEY doesn't really make a good argument against the modern web
• Thoughts on bundle sizes, code-splitting, and why aggressive code-splitting is still better than frequent round trips to a server-rendered app
• How Svelte and Sapper handle SSR
• Why page transitions are the killer argument for building SPAs if we want to be able to compete with native experiences
• Should we be thinking about JavaScript applications as native applications in terms of offline-support and eventual consistency, or should we keep thinking of them as webpages that depend on the network?

Links:

• Svelte
• Sapper
• "Second-guessing the modern web"
• "In defense of the modern web"

Supporting the show:

I decided to stop taking sponsors for the show because I think advertisements are annoying and no one wants to listen to them.

If you do want to support the show, the best way to do it is to purchase one of my products:

• Tailwind UI, a collection of professionally designed, fully responsive HTML components built with Tailwind CSS.
• Refactoring UI, a book and video series I put together with Steve Schoger on designing beautiful user interfaces, without relying on a designer.
• Advanced Vue Component Design, a course on designing simpler, more flexible Vue components that are both more powerful and easier to maintain.
• Test-Driven Laravel, a massive video course on designing robust Laravel applications with TDD. Learn how to build a real-world application from scratch without writing a single line of untested code.
• Refactoring to Collections, a book and video course that teaches you how to apply functional programming principles to break down ugly, complex code into simple transformations — free of loops, complex conditionals, and temporary variables.