Are you calling a C compiler overhead as well? Ahead of time compilation is not runtime overhead, and for users of the web, runtime and network latency are all that matters with regard to the perception of speed.
Mental overhead matters much more than performance overhead to most applications. The whole plot of JS is that it’s easy enough to work with that it overpowers any performance limitations. Svelte invents a completely new execution model for JS which adds overhead.
I honestly don't believe you've actually used Svelte even in an experimental context to make such a comment. Go check out the tutorial on the Svelte site and get back to us.
It's literally >90% just HTML, CSS, and JS. The last <10% is split between stores, if- and each-blocks, and data binding syntax. If you don't know HTML, CSS, and JS as a web developer, I don't know what to tell you. If you do, the notion that Svelte has a substantial mental overhead compared to any other web framework—especially React—is utterly ludicrous.
And that’s similarly how I feel about people who think Svelte is significantly less complex than React. At least React is just Javascript. Svelte tries to override assignment to trigger side effects. That’s crazy.
Aren't Hooks also a significant deviation from the JS execution model? That they needed to write whole new documentation to clarify the model and its application seems to speak to some deviation
