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Firstly, congrats on shipping a virtual DOM lib in WASM. Hopefully, frameworks intent on using a V-DOM will greatly benefit from this. Having said that, is a V

Firstly, congrats on shipping a virtual DOM lib in WASM. Hopefully, frameworks intent on using a V-DOM will greatly benefit from this. Having said that, is a V-DOM required in 2019, if DOM updates are optimally batched, like in FastDom ( https://github.com/wilsonpage/fastdom https://github.com/wilsonpage/fastdom ). Decades of optimizing browser internals would surely account for not trashing the DOM, if updated optimally. So, is it required?

lhorie 8y ago
They are only batched if they are all updates or all reads, but not if there's an interpolation of both. Even if the browser optimizes it with an optimum update strategy, it doesn't matter if a developer who doesn't know better forces thrashing to occur. Virtual DOM libs help structure code in such a way that idiomatic code falls into the pit of success.
zdragnar 8y ago
To build a client-rendered site? No, vdom is not required. To build a tool with multiple render targets? Maybe, or at least something similar. In particular, the trend of rendering a page via a node.js server, and delivering the rendering logic to the client so that subsequent renders do not require a full round-trip is pretty alluring if you're building something more complex than a blog or run-of-the-mill ecommerce site. https://catberry.org/ https://catberry.org/ is one of the older examples I can think of that do the above sans vdom, though now that I look at it again, it seems to have changed quite a bit in the years since I first found it.
acdha 8y ago
It’s never been required — and is usually substantially slower – but a virtualdom may be worth the overhead because it avoids the need to organize those updates. Most cases aren’t performance sensitive to the point where that’s the deciding factor in a decision.
- megaman821 8y ago
  It appears lit-html is using a method that keeps updates declarative. https://lit-html.polymer-project.org/ https://lit-html.polymer-project.org/
anonytrary 8y ago
The optimization VDOMs make is orthogonal to the optimization that batching offers. VDOMs prevent you from having to update more of your tree than is necessary. Batching is a separate optimization, and could easily be applied to VDOM-originating mutations.

lhorie 8y ago

They are only batched if they are all updates or all reads, but not if there's an interpolation of both. Even if the browser optimizes it with an optimum update strategy, it doesn't matter if a developer who doesn't know better forces thrashing to occur. Virtual DOM libs help structure code in such a way that idiomatic code falls into the pit of success.

zdragnar 8y ago

To build a client-rendered site? No, vdom is not required. To build a tool with multiple render targets? Maybe, or at least something similar. In particular, the trend of rendering a page via a node.js server, and delivering the rendering logic to the client so that subsequent renders do not require a full round-trip is pretty alluring if you're building something more complex than a blog or run-of-the-mill ecommerce site. https://catberry.org/ https://catberry.org/ is one of the older examples I can think of that do the above sans vdom, though now that I look at it again, it seems to have changed quite a bit in the years since I first found it.

acdha 8y ago

It’s never been required — and is usually substantially slower – but a virtualdom may be worth the overhead because it avoids the need to organize those updates. Most cases aren’t performance sensitive to the point where that’s the deciding factor in a decision.

megaman821 8y ago
It appears lit-html is using a method that keeps updates declarative. https://lit-html.polymer-project.org/ https://lit-html.polymer-project.org/

anonytrary 8y ago

The optimization VDOMs make is orthogonal to the optimization that batching offers. VDOMs prevent you from having to update more of your tree than is necessary. Batching is a separate optimization, and could easily be applied to VDOM-originating mutations.