Every web app no matter the framework boils down to HTML and CSS at its core. The furthest you can get from those is ratcheting up the number of <div> and <span> elements, then of course making the mad dash to reintroduce the lost functionality through heaps of JS and accessibility through aria roles.

Or… you could use the tags most appropriate to the problem with accessibility and SEO automatically coming along for the ride.

PicoCSS is an excellent example of what can be accomplished with just a sprinkling (~10KB) of CSS over plain old HTML.

Browsers can do so much more than they used to out of the box today. We should take advantage of that rather than silo it away in one-off React-based APIs.

Compiled languages boil down to assembly, but I wouldn't like to write them as assembly files with a few higher-level constructs sprinkled through the files.

You may disagree that html and css are that bad. But I think it was always a mess, specially when you go beyond linked documents and add any kind of interactivity and forms. There's also inherent limitations like "select" dropdowns offering very little functionality and mostly ending up as custom components in all projects I have worked in.

You seem to be taking the position that Svelte does not allow for components for cases like custom dropdowns where HTML falls short on its own.

This is not at all the case. I highly recommend actually looking at Svelte examples before commenting further.

That said, there are a lot of folks out there who don't know that, for example, combo boxes and accordions are possible with plain HTML.

    <datalist>
    <details>
    <summary>

PicoCSS is a great resource for seeing what's possible with just plain HTML and ~10KB of CSS.

I don't have knowledge about Svelte so you may be right about it solving all those issues. My contention is with regards to the general idea of the article and some comments that seem to indicate that everything was good in the web development world before React introduced a bunch of problems. React did introduce some problems, but to sell me on migrating I'll need to see that the new framework solves the issues inherent to web development, not just the issues that React created.

I do not think that is a charitable view of the article or most people's comments. We all knew what was gained. We just bemoan what was lost, much of which has been found to be largely unknown to more recent entrants into the field.

Folks aren't against solving problems. I think the main concern is the amnesia regarding problems that had already be solved and are now be solved again only not as well.