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It’s often cheaper to couple things tightly. Abstractions and interfaces have costs. However, they also have benefits. Perhaps React and Preact is one such exam

It’s often cheaper to couple things tightly. Abstractions and interfaces have costs. However, they also have benefits. Perhaps React and Preact is one such example. React is a tiny fully agnostic library that does components, props, hooks and all that jazz. You can use it anywhere, from DOM to CLI. To tie it to DOM, a separate library exists—named, unimaginatively, ReactDOM—and that’s where the 100KB heft comes in. Preact is the opposite: smaller, but coupled to DOM. The architecture probably doesn’t facilitate cool stuff like render components to embedded LCD[0], and even to do SSR you would have to add extra libraries. [0] https://github.com/doodlewind/react-ssd1306/blob/master/docs/tutorial.md https://github.com/doodlewind/react-ssd1306/blob/master/docs...

acemarke 3y ago
It's somewhere in between. React as a lib and architecture _is_ platform-agnostic. The core logic is defined in the `react-reconciler` package. It contains all the implementation of rendering components, diffing trees, managing state, and running effects, as well as all the "Suspense" implementation. However, the way `react-reconciler` works is that it's built _into_ each platform-specific renderer implementation. So, the size of `react-dom` is actually the size of `react-reconciler` + all the DOM-specific behavior. A quick check of https://bundlejs.com/?q=react-reconciler https://bundlejs.com/?q=react-reconciler suggests it's about 100K minified. https://bundlejs.com/?q=react-dom https://bundlejs.com/?q=react-dom is 138K, so that tells me that the DOM-specific logic is 38K.