Enhancing Svelte for success (widespread adoption)

[CordialGit]

Angular, React and Vue have without argument, taken over the JavaScript frontend space.

Next.JS and Nuxt.JS came unto the scene, and they took React and Vue to a whole new level.

Then React Native ( https://reactnative.dev ) and Expo ( https://expo.dev )took React to a height that both Angular and Vue couldn't and may never catch up to -- as they (React Native and Expo) allowed React to be used in building Cross-platform Mobile Apps.

The point here, is that a good thing of itself doesn't just succeed.

It still needs external and additional things to help it succeed, no matter what great benefits it brings to the table.

If you remove Next.JS, React Native, and the entire third party libraries like Icon Library, Component UI Libraries, Redux, React Query, and so many others--- React might not have succeeded as it did.

A BACKGROUND
I come from a WordPress background-- where everything has already been done for me :: I just need to install WordPress, install plugins for whatever functionality I need, and viola, my fully functional website is up and running without me ever writing a single line of code.

And this "never writing a single line of code" to get a website up and running, is the strength of WordPress.

THE ISSUE
I need to build a Social Media Application, but the synchronous Architecture of WordPress and PHP, will not make me able to scale.

Through my experience with WordPress, I have learned two concepts for Optimal Performance -- this is "lean development and ease-of-use".

1.) LEAN DEVELOPMENT means that, you use as less tools and dependencies as possible, in order to reduce bloat and server overhead, so that you can increase and achieve optimal and optimized page load performance.

2.) EASE OF USE means that, the tool should be easy to use.

After some research, I saw that Svelte advertised itself as "easy to use" and a Compiler with no Virtual DOM, thus it has reduced dependencies.

I am now in love with Svelte, and I am new to custom Web development-- and the very first project I want to build in my life from scratch and with code, I chose to build it with Svelte.

However, I have frustration with Svelte.

THE DISADVANTAGES WITH USING SVELTE
1.) SMALL UNHELPFUL COMMUNITY
When I wanted to learn Svelte, what I was presented with, is that the Svelte Community is small.

In the long run, what I found out, is that the issue with the Svelte Community isn't about being small. It is about the truth that the Svelte Community isn't very helpful and supportive to newbies and beginners:

-- they don't share code snippets.
-- they don't take out time to help you look at your problem to support you in fixing it.
-- they are not willing to properly guide you.
-- and they many times behave very hostile.

2.) BIGOTED DOCUMENTATION
The Svelte Documentation is bigoted: it is written in a high level way, as if Svelte was saying:

                          " We hate beginners!
              Go and learn React or Vue before you come here!
                        We don't have time for dummies!"

You see, learning Technology (JavaScript) is hard enough. You should not make it harder than it already is.

Svelte needs to review its Documentation and make it more simple to understand: Get someone who studied Art in College to go through the Documentation to simplify it.

Technologists don't ever produce easy to understand Documentation for the layman!

3.) DIFFICULT NAVIGATION AROUND TUTORIAL
Sometimes, I get stuck around the tutorial, not understanding where exactly I need to do something.

Please make the tutorial more user friendly.

EXPECTED IMPROVEMENTS
You see, before React, Angular, Vue or Svelte, the world had built websites since 1995, and these websites served the world well.

JavaScript in itself, could be used to already make websites interactive -- and paired with HTML and CSS, we could build any kind of UI that we want.

So I see it as a misleading statement to say that React, Vue or Svelte are here to help us build User Interfaces.

We could already build User Interfaces without React, Angular, Vue or Svelte.

What React or Vue or Svelte brought to the table, is easy State Management.

For Svelte, I'm hoping for the following Improvements, if Svelte is willing to succeed and gain widespread adoption to the level of React:

1.) REUSABLE COMPONENTS AND CODE SNIPPETS
On the Svelte website, there should be reusable Components and Code Snippets -- so that beginners can just copy-paste these into their projects, and get up and running, without necessarily building and coding everything from scratch.

ShadCN Svelte ( https://www.shadcn-svelte.com) -- is an attempt at UI Components for Svelte, by Huntabyte ( https://github.com/huntabyte ).

If Svelte wants to be a self-contained system that would rely less on external libraries and dependencies, it must be self composed to an extent, and offer in-built UI Components that can be customized further.

We can borrow a cue of this from Flutter:

Flutter wants to be a fully self contained system for Mobile Apps without much of external dependencies, so it has its own UI Components Library as seen here -- https://docs.flutter.dev/ui/widgets

Svelte should do the same!

1b.) ICON PACKAGE
Svelte should have an Icon Package.

In my Project, I am using Google's Material Icons, and this was sufficient.

I'm just of the opinion that it would be nice if there is a native Icon Package of Svelte from Svelte, that I can natively import or copy-paste into my Project and use-- without needing to depend on Third party libraries.

2.) EASY BEGINNER FRIENDLY DOCUMENTATION
New adopters and beginners are the people that will use Svelte and SvelteKit.

Senior developers are already hooked to React, Angular and Vue.

So it is an error of judgement for Svelte to say that its documentation is not for beginners.

Svelte should re-align its philosophy, and make itself "the JavaScript User Interface and State Management framework for beginners and dummies".

It is these dummies and beginners that will build the next big thing in Svelte that will succeed!

3.) FRIENDLY COMMUNITY
The Svelte Community should be:

-- Willing to share code.
-- Willing to guide beginners, and even share video guides.

All of these kind of attitude, will encourage beginners, and draw more people to love Svelte, its ecosystem and its Community.

4.) STRONG ATTENTION TO SVELTE NATIVE
Svelte Native needs to be given strong attention. It needs to be take to the level where React Native ( https://reactnative.dev ) and Expo ( https://expo.dev) have gotten to.

Right now, Svelte Native is looking like a dying or abandoned Project.

It needs to be revived again!

[dominikg]

1.) SMALL UNHELPFUL COMMUNITY

https://svelte.dev/chat has tens of thousands of users, the help section #help-svelte-and-kit and #help-ecosystem is lively and questions get answered quickly and in detail. There is also https://www.reddit.com/r/sveltejs/ , our various projects on github/sveltejs or stack overflow.

-- they don't share code snippets.

We provide REPLs for svelte4: https://svelte.dev/repl and svelte5: https://svelte-5-preview.vercel.app/ . And community members built https://sveltelab.dev. These are used to share examples and snippets and while i don't have exact numbers, pretty sure its upwards of 100k total, going back years.

-- they don't take out time to help you look at your problem to support you in fixing it.

I'm taking time out of my saturday morning to respond to your post, not only to help you, but because your post paints the svelte community in a light it does not deserve. This is not a paid service, this is a community of volunteers.

-- they are not willing to properly guide you.

Oh we are, but for proper guideance it is helpful if you share some details and bring some patience. Don't expect outright solutions immediately but helpful hints to be able to solve your issues. The channels i mentioned above rarely have unanswered questions and if they do, most of them are due to lack of details or niche subjects.

-- and they many times behave very hostile.

We have a code of conduct: https://github.com/sveltejs/community/blob/main/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
If you experience hostility or witness violations, reach out to us and it will get taken care of.

2.) BIGOTED DOCUMENTATION

We provide an interactive 4 part tutorial from basic svelte to advanced sveltekit at https://learn.svelte.dev/tutorial/welcome-to-svelte
And full reference documentation including a custom search at https://svelte.dev/docs/introduction and https://kit.svelte.dev/docs/introduction . Svelte is designed to be easy to learn and teach and our tutorial has been widely regarded and the approach is also used by multiple other frameworks now.
This post shares a bit about the philosophies behind it: #10085

EXPECTED IMPROVEMENTS

I hope you are going to improve your way of approaching a community as this "demand letter" is not sending a great message.
Please take a step back and start over, join our discord ask small questions, maybe about tutorial pages that were not intuitive to you. If there is indeed a way to improve them, you can look into contributing these improvements or maybe someone else who takes part in that discussion will. A community lives through taking part in it.

[CordialGit]

I appreciate your response to me, and will start to see some aspects of Svelte in a different light, from here onwards.

The part of EXPECTED IMPROVEMENTS is something within the power of the Svelte Team to allow.

If they create a system where Community members can create Reusable Components, and submit to the Svelte Website, we will have hundreds of Reusable Components.

The same thing goes for Icons.

You see, if there are Reusable Components like Accordions, Carousels, Sliders, and other Reusable pre-built UI components on the Svelte website, people will trust to use them because they are coming from Svelte itself.

But if it is some random developer hosting it somehow on Github, people will use such resources with caution.

If the Svelte Team does not allow this, there's nothing that I or any other Svelte user can do.

[brunnerh]

Svelte is a generic framework for creating components, providing concrete component implementations is outside its realm of responsibility. Svelte is used by many different people and companies for very different UIs. The same is true for the vast majority of other UI frameworks like it.

There are community resources out there, e.g. the Svelte Society page catalogues packages containing components or complete design systems.

For icons you can use any SVG directly as a Svelte component. E.g. Icones has an extensive list of icons and also an option to generate components (though it really just has to add {...$$props}).