I've worked with a system that was similar to the virtual dom, and I can tell that the ponyfoo author has NOT tried to work with text nodes. Browsers will merg

I've worked with a system that was similar to the virtual dom, and I can tell that the ponyfoo author has NOT tried to work with text nodes. Browsers will merge those in an instant. (Side Note: IE in general, including IE11, has had some WEIRD text node behavior, that changes between versions of IE) So making each updatable component an actual (non-text) DOM Node is an unfortunate requirement.