I recently saw a tweet from Rich about Future Svelte.
I was very excited to open this video, I watched it twice, the quality is still very high, from how to build open source library to how to operate open source library and open source library core planning a series of topics. Although this video is for Svelte, I think it can be applied to any framework.
Next, I made a summary of some important points. If you want to see the full version of the content, please see the original video (www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQn…
The whole video was conducted in the form of q&A, so I summarized the host’s questions to Rich for each title. If you just want to see Svelte’s future plans, you can skip to the fourth content. At the bottom of each piece of content is the author’s own personal understanding (can not agree to skip), non-dialogue content.
1. What was the first popular open source library built? How to change the process on the open source path?
Rich mentioned that his first popular open source library was Ractive. This library may be unfamiliar to you. But it was all the rage at the time, and it could be said to be the father of MVVM
Here is an example of Ractive:
Is Vue similar to Ractive? In the early years, Vue borrowed from Ractive’s usage, which can also be seen in Vue’s historical Issues.
But when Ractive was rolled out, React was rolled out, and Rich thought, oh, my god, I’m wasting my time. (React, after all, had a company backing it), But Rich eventually launched Ractive, and the community responded so well that Rich felt he could compete with React.
So Rich put a lot of effort into Ractive, spending all his weekends and evenings working on the project. It was also the first time that he invested a lot of experience in open source, which laid a good foundation for the open source career in the future.
But with the maintenance workload, it was exhausting for Rich to work on projects in his spare time, and this was his first introduction to the reality of being an open source maintainer. But the experience taught him how to acquire users, how to get them to contribute, how to unify projects, and how to refuse PR.
Since then, Rich has been moving forward on the road of open source, and has launched two other well-known libraries Rollup and Svelte.
Tip (my own summary, unofficial attitude) : Having goals in one direction early on helps us build knowledge and get into the open source queue.
2. How do you create a valuable tool that doesn’t exist on the market today?
Rich believes that creating tools is largely a result of “personal itch” (loosely defined as personal technical exploration, building your own tool when something on the market doesn’t work). Because he worked in a newsroom, there was often a lot of heavy, iterative work, so it was important to take advantage of open source projects, and it was in the midst of that heavy work that Rich wanted to make the development process simple enough to create Svelte.
Tip: It’s an old question, but it’s the business that makes a good open source project.
3. What does joining Vercel mean for Svelte’s future?
1.Rich is also outspoken, entering Vercel can deal with strong people, after all, such as Webpack author Tobias and SWC author Donny joined Vercel. (And the recent addition of React soul Sebastian to Vercel)
2. Another important point: When Rich joined Vercel, it meant he only had to work one job. (My job at Vercel was to open source, which was enviable.)
3. The upside of having a job is that you have more time to devote to open source, and Rich made it clear that he was exhausted from working part-time on Ractive, and he didn’t want that to happen to Svelte.
4. Dispel the fear that an unfunded open source project will disappear at any time. But now it has a full-time engineer, and Vercel has poured resources into Svelte, not just Rich himself, but steph Dietz to handle the developer relations team.
Later, Lee and Rich discuss how Svelte can get to the next level of growth. (This latter point is really important when you have a fast growing open source project)
Lee believes that leveraging work and recruiting is very important for Svelte. Take React as an example. Some open source fans may be studying React. If companies require React in recruitment, there will be a positive feedback for fans, which will also lead to the rapid development of React community, creating a positive cycle.
Lee also noted that Facebook (Meta) also uses Svelte on one of their sites, and even though they created React, they still like to experiment, which is a very good quality for them.
Rich also expressed confidence in Svelte
Tip: Open source maintainers really need to balance their day job and their side job, and maybe there will be a new solution in the future that will help open source maintainers have a better time distribution and income. (Otherwise it will be like the recent Log4j…)
4. Regarding the future master plan of Svelte, how to promote the framework in the next year or several years?
Looking at the timeline, Rich said that a major new release is indeed coming.
It’s been two and a half years since Svelte3 was released.
Rich has a lot of ideas for Svelte4, but he’s a little hesitant to go ahead and dig a hole, lol. (And kind of cute, knowing that you always dig holes, but don’t.)
But he did talk about some of the things he’s working on now, using Rust to rewrite many toolchains to speed up compilation.
It is also important to note that many people criticize/worry about Svelte because when Svelte is coded differently, the volume curve of Svelte increases with the number of components more steeply than other frameworks.
This picture reflects the problem that Svelte has been criticized for…
Detailed Issues can be found at github.com/sveltejs/sv…
Although Rich believed that this was not a problem in reality because Code Splitting and inflection points were far enough away, it was still a hidden danger.
So Rich says a new compilation scheme that makes the compiled code smaller than the input code is really exciting
We also talked about new things being considered such as Error Boundaries, Suspense, and React Server Components.
Tip: From Lee’s conversation, it is better to have an overall plan of the local record project, which helps people to have confidence in the project. I think Vue does a good job of this. Every time there is a big change, we will first propose an RFC to discuss
5. How to plan the contents of the React core library? For example, the React core library has to choose its own state management library, routing, etc. How to delimit the boundary between core library and ecological library?
Rich said React’s definition of a core library is very scalable, but you’re also forced to create ecosystems around it (route management, state management, and how to manage your CSS)
This did lead to a lot of innovation in CSS and JS libraries in React, but it also led to the problem of choice, as Rich mentioned how to add CSS to React, there was no answer.
As for the core library division, Rich gives an answer. He thinks React is a JS framework, but Svelte is a Web framework, so he makes it as easy as possible for people to write animations quickly, transitions quickly and so on.
The division of the core library is really important. Individuals prefer the official unified ecosystem to reduce users’ choice costs. Of course, the official website can also provide interfaces to embrace other competitive products.
6. How to solve the problem of open source funding? What do you think a venture-backed company like Vercel could do?
Rich says it’s hard for him, and it’s something he’s learning.
Lee echoed Rich’s answer, saying that perhaps throwing millions into open source projects would surely solve the problem.
Sometimes open source projects may want sponsors to provide a pM-like role to help the open source project manage its time better, freeing up the core developer’s time for chores.
Rich believes that many projects could benefit from PM, and that there may be a model for someone to act as PM for various projects, and that the OpenJS Foundation has some solutions.
He thinks one of the biggest problems with open source projects is that they need to sort Issues and PR. If someone who doesn’t write the code says they can help, he thinks it can help a lot, but not always. Some open source projects only allow core developers to manage.
Lee, think a lot of very successful open source project, before has the support of company support, founder and primary maintainer as a start-up operation, need to do a lot of work, product, marketing, engineering, technology leadership, PM, and constantly expand your skills, parts of the different core team or delegated to the open source community.
In the early stage of the project, individuals need to spend a lot of time, which is much more difficult to manage than the company. It is very important for the leader’s personal ability, especially the selection of the core team.
conclusion
Although the interview is Svelte throughout the whole process, I think this discussion is not limited to Svelte, suitable for any open source project process, from how to build a valuable project that is not available in the market, How to divide the core library when designing the open source project (project positioning), how to promote the open source project (recruitment/work is a very important direction), how to shape the project together with the open source sponsorship, and finally the future planning of the project should have a documentation sediment
If you are also interested in Svelte, welcome to join Svelte Interest Exchange group to exchange and learn (add me wX: qiufengblue to enter ~)