looking.svelte
May 2, 2021
So when I started this blog I promised myself that I would write at least one blog entry a month, and I have already failed. I blame the month of April, did you know it only has 30 days? I was planning on writing the article on April 31st, but there was no April 31st… Why didn’t this article come out on May 1st you might ask? I was busy okay, I haven’t replied to my Whatsapp messages in weeks because I’ve been busy working on this:
Pretty good right? Right??? Anyway, I am writing this article to talk about Svelte. Svelte in Swedish means starving, isn't language is neat! No not the thing you call an older man with salt and pepper chest hair who right before he is about to dive into an infinity pool has a heart attack making you realize you could die at any second and that you've wasted your life writing a stupid blog that no one reads and that you never finished that video game you planned to make...
But I digress.
Svelte is a web frontend framework made by this guy that works at The New York Times The The New York Times that revolutionized websites as we know it. Well not really, but it is pretty cool. And in order to understand why Svelte is cool we need to understand a little bit of the history of frontend web development.a.brief.history.of.web.development
A long time ago in the year 1995, the JavaScript language was born. It was quickly bought by some company and they trademarked the name so no one can use it without paying. JavaScript was then renamed to ECMAScript, but no one could remember that so people just kept calling it JavaScript.
Fast forward a few years, it's 2006. The world has just been introduced to Facebook. Facebook, FACEBOOK! Don't get me started on Facebook. You got ten hours. Good. Wait how long should these tooltips be? Doesn't matter it's tirade time! Come all and listen to this incredible build up that I'm creating. You ready? Okay, here goes. Facebook sucks! Nailed it. jQuery has just hit the scene and web developers rejoiced because they could now do what they only dreamed. They could now easily select any part of a web page. And thusly started making overcomplicated websites to show off pictures of their cats.
It's a few years later, it's 2010 and Instagram INSTAGRAM IS FACEBOOK! Wake up people! Facebook bought Instagram and now they own your soul! Also Facebook is faked the moon landing and shot JFK from the grassy knoll. Mark Zuckerberg is Luke Skywalkers' real father and mother. Don't be fooled! is released onto the world. Also a little JavaScript library named Backbone JS was released and web developers rejoiced because they could now do what they only dreamed. They could have their data stored in the browser and reference it in an easy way. This, in turn, allowed them to make and maintain more complex websites more easily. And thusly allowed them to make super overcomplicated poorly performing websites that were as buggy as they were useful and filled with cats.
And before you could blink it's 2013 Don't close your eyes for three years!, Edward Snowden reveals that Facebook is not the only people watching your every move. And a little JavaScript library called React, made by a little company called Facebook Holy Mother of God! We can't get away from them, they're god damn everywhere. Noooooo!!!, was released onto the world and web developers rejoiced because they could now do what they only dreamed. This library had reimplemented how the browser manages parts of a web page and called it the Virtual DOM so that developers could have better control over what shows up and when. This allowed developers to create gigantic websites filled with cats, that worked pretty well until there were too many cats on the web page.
back.to.basics
This history leaves _a lot_ of things out. There are a so many more JavaScript Libraries out there that if I were go through them all it would take me until the end of time. Thankfully climate change will cut that short. But the one I will talk about for a bit is Svelte. What is special about Svelte you may ask? Well nothing really. What it does is create a framework on top of JavaScript that helps developers manage what elements show up on a web page. In that way it's a lot like React. Where it differs from React is the Virtual DOM. Svelte doesn't use one, so you can display you gigantic list of cats without fear.
If you're thinking that sounds good John, Thanks! I like your attitude. that sounds pretty different. Well there are already a number of other similar libraries out there that do exactly the same thing. And some would argue that you don't need any JavaScript Libraries at all.
conclusion
What have we learned. We learned that web development, has gone through a lot of changes over the years. Also that web developers seem to have a lot of time on their hands to write a bunch of stuff nobody needs This blog for example.. And that Facebook is an evil Facebook locked people out of devices they already owned if they didn't have a Facebook account. company full of evil Facebook helps pharamceutical companies track and show ads to sick people. people doing evil Facebook paid people to install spyware on their phones. things. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some Whatsapp Nooooooooo! Facebook owns Whatsapp too! messages to reply to.