> What I think is really interesting is that the Virtual DOM was touted as the better abstraction when React came out (in comparison to Angular's dirty checking).

I think the VDOM seemed to offer a maxima and people thought it might be a global one (even though in hindsight it seems like a silly proposition). Angular certainly hasn't exactly delivered on performance in any meaningful way that I know of, at least, so maybe the VDOM, even if it was a local maxima, was still the better of the two?

As a basis for a durable design and a way to move forward, clearly we have a better way, though, but that can only be illustrated by a project actually doing well at it.

I think VDOM made sense at the time because DOM elements come with so much overhead that dirty checking thousands of elements (in Angular 1's case) does not scale well.

I think the issue became that the VDOM creates some overhead that making very simple DOM changes can avoid altogether. From what I understand, Svelte sidesteps the VDOM and outputs the smallest amount of code to achieve the desired level of reactivity which might be the better abstraction.

> focusing on a compiler versus a full on framework

Angular goes a similar way, just look up Ivy renderer on the internet.

That's very interesting! Stopped paying attention after Angular 2 was released... will take a look, thanks for the info!

Edit: It looks like the goals are a bit different with Angular's focus on Typescript (Svelte let's you do this but is not entirely focused on Typescript). Also not sure if Angular's compiler supports CSS compilation.