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Inferno

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Svelte

1.5K
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+ 1
490
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Inferno vs Svelte: What are the differences?

Introduction

Inferno and Svelte are two popular JavaScript frameworks used for building web applications. While both frameworks have their similarities, there are several key differences that set them apart.

  1. Performance: Inferno is known for its lightning-fast virtual DOM rendering speed, making it one of the fastest frameworks available. It achieves this by prioritizing minimalism and efficiency. On the other hand, Svelte takes a different approach by compiling the application at build time, resulting in smaller bundle sizes and faster initial load times.

  2. Bundle Size: Inferno focuses on keeping the bundle size as small as possible, making it ideal for applications where size is a significant concern. It achieves this by removing unused code and features through aggressive optimization techniques. Svelte, on the other hand, leverages its compiler to generate highly optimized, minimal bundles, resulting in smaller overall application sizes.

  3. Reactivity: Svelte's reactive system enables automatic DOM updates by tracking and updating only the parts of the DOM that are affected by data changes. This approach allows for efficient re-rendering and avoids unnecessary updates, resulting in better performance. In contrast, Inferno's virtual DOM diffing algorithm compares two virtual DOM trees to compute the changes needed to update the actual DOM. While this approach is still efficient, it may result in more work being done compared to Svelte's reactive system.

  4. Syntax and Transition: Inferno aims to closely mimic the syntax and APIs of React, making it easier for React developers to adopt. It provides a smooth transition path for React applications, allowing developers to leverage their existing knowledge and codebase. Svelte, on the other hand, introduces a new syntax and a different way of thinking about building applications, which might require some initial learning and adaptation for developers.

  5. Build-time vs Runtime: Svelte is a build-time compiler, which means the code is transformed and optimized during the build process. This approach allows for more extensive optimizations, resulting in faster initial load times and improved performance. Inferno, on the other hand, is a runtime library that leverages reactive programming techniques and virtual DOM diffing. This approach provides flexibility but may result in a slightly slower initial load time compared to Svelte.

  6. Community and Ecosystem: Both Inferno and Svelte have active communities and ecosystems, but they differ in terms of size and maturity. React, the framework behind Inferno, has a larger community and a more extensive ecosystem with a wide range of libraries, tools, and resources available. Svelte's community is growing rapidly, and while it may not have the same level of maturity as React, it has a dedicated and passionate community that is actively contributing to its growth.

In summary, Inferno and Svelte differ in terms of performance, bundle size optimization strategies, reactivity approaches, syntax and transition paths, build-time vs runtime compilation, and community and ecosystem maturity.

Decisions about Inferno and Svelte
Máté Homolya
Senior developer at Self-employed · | 11 upvotes · 275.2K views
Migrated
from
ReactReact
to
SvelteSvelte

Svelte is everything a developer could ever want for flexible, scalable frontend development. I feel like React has reached a maturity level where there needs to be new syntactic sugar added (I'm looking at you, hooks!). I love how Svelte sets out to rebuild a new language to write interfaces in from the ground up.

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Alex Guesnon
Full-stack software engineer · | 3 upvotes · 112.3K views
Chose
SvelteSvelte
over
Vue.jsVue.js

Svelte 3 is exacly what I'm looking for that Vue is not made for.

It has a iterable dom just like angular but very low overhead.

This is going to be used with the application.

for old/ lite devices . ie. * android tv, * micro linux, * possibly text based web browser for ascci and/or linux framebuffer * android go devices * android One devices

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Pros of Inferno
Pros of Svelte
  • 4
    React-like api
  • 4
    Faster than React
  • 3
    Compatibility package for existing React apps
  • 3
    Smaller bundles
  • 3
    Faster than Angular
  • 3
    Faster than Vue
  • 55
    Performance
  • 38
    Reactivity
  • 34
    Javascript compiler (do that browsers don't have to)
  • 34
    Components
  • 33
    Simplicity
  • 30
    Lightweight
  • 28
    Near to no learning curve
  • 26
    Fast as vanilajs
  • 26
    Real Reactivity
  • 22
    All in one
  • 18
    Use existing js libraries
  • 18
    Compiler based
  • 16
    SSR
  • 16
    Very easy for beginners
  • 16
    Scalable
  • 13
    Composable
  • 12
    Ease of use
  • 12
    No runtime overhead
  • 10
    Built in store
  • 9
    Typescript
  • 7
    Start with pure html + css
  • 7
    Best Developer Experience
  • 6
    Templates
  • 4
    Speed

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Cons of Inferno
Cons of Svelte
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 3
      Event Listener Overload
    • 2
      Little to no libraries
    • 2
      Complex
    • 2
      Learning Curve
    • 2
      Hard to learn

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    - No public GitHub repository available -

    What is Inferno?

    Inferno is an isomorphic library for building high-performance user interfaces, which is crucial when targeting mobile devices. Unlike typical virtual DOM libraries like React, Mithril, Virtual-dom, Snabbdom and Om, Inferno uses techniques to separate static and dynamic content. This allows Inferno to only "diff" renders that have dynamic values.

    What is Svelte?

    If you've ever built a JavaScript application, the chances are you've encountered – or at least heard of – frameworks like React, Angular, Vue and Ractive. Like Svelte, these tools all share a goal of making it easy to build slick interactive user interfaces. Rather than interpreting your application code at run time, your app is converted into ideal JavaScript at build time. That means you don't pay the performance cost of the framework's abstractions, or incur a penalty when your app first loads.

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    What companies use Inferno?
    What companies use Svelte?
    See which teams inside your own company are using Inferno or Svelte.
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    What tools integrate with Inferno?
    What tools integrate with Svelte?

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    Blog Posts

    JavaScriptGitHubReact+12
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    What are some alternatives to Inferno and Svelte?
    React
    Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project.
    Preact
    Preact is an attempt to recreate the core value proposition of React (or similar libraries like Mithril) using as little code as possible, with first-class support for ES2015. Currently the library is around 3kb (minified & gzipped).
    jQuery
    jQuery is a cross-platform JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML.
    AngularJS
    AngularJS lets you write client-side web applications as if you had a smarter browser. It lets you use good old HTML (or HAML, Jade and friends!) as your template language and lets you extend HTML’s syntax to express your application’s components clearly and succinctly. It automatically synchronizes data from your UI (view) with your JavaScript objects (model) through 2-way data binding.
    Vue.js
    It is a library for building interactive web interfaces. It provides data-reactive components with a simple and flexible API.
    See all alternatives