The common view is that frameworks make it easier to manage the complexity of your code: the framework abstracts away all the fussy implementation details with techniques like virtual DOM diffing. But that's not really true. At best, frameworks move the complexity around, away from code that you had to write and into code you didn't.

Instead, the reason that ideas like React are so wildly and deservedly successful is that they make it easier to manage the complexity of your concepts. Frameworks are primarily a tool for structuring your thoughts, not your code.

Given that, what if the framework didn't actually run in the browser? What if, instead, it converted your application into pure vanilla JavaScript, just like Babel converts ES2016+ to ES5? You'd pay no upfront cost of shipping a hefty runtime, and your app would get seriously fast, because:

there'd be no layers of abstraction between your app and the browser.

Introducing Svelte