If you’ve stumbled onto this article, chances are you’ve heard whispers about Svelte — the JavaScript framework that feels like a magical spellbook for UI development. ✨
Maybe you’ve tried React or Vue and thought:
- “Why is my bundle size the size of a small planet?” 🌍
- “Why am I juggling hooks, effects, and state libraries just to make a button count clicks?” 🤹
- “Is there a simpler way to build reactive apps without losing my mind?” 🧠
Well, welcome to Svelte. 🎉
This series, Svelte Deep Dive, is your guided adventure from total beginner to pro-level wizard 🧙♂️ in the world of Svelte and SvelteKit. Whether you’ve never touched it before, or you’ve dabbled but want to go deeper, you’re in the right place.
Why Another Svelte Series?
Good question. There are already tutorials and docs out there. But here’s the thing:
- Incremental learning → We’ll build up concepts layer by layer. No jumping straight into dragons before you know how to swing a sword. 🗡️
- Everything explained → No “it just works” hand-waving. We’ll explore why things work the way they do.
- Usage patterns & gotchas → You’ll see real-world scenarios, not just toy code snippets.
By the end, you won’t just know what Svelte can do — you’ll know how to wield it confidently in real-world projects.
What’s Coming in This Series?
Here’s a quick taste of what we’ll cover (and yes, it’s a feast 🍕):
- Foundations – Reactivity, props, events, loops.
- Styling & Animations – Scoped CSS, transitions, motion stores.
- State & Data Flow – Stores, context, async data handling.
- SvelteKit – Routing, forms, APIs, SSR/SSG, deployment.
- Advanced Patterns – Custom stores, actions, slots, lifecycle hooks.
- Performance & Scaling – Optimizations, TypeScript, testing.
- Pro Topics – i18n, auth, GraphQL, edge functions, production workflows.
And here’s the best part: each section comes with mini-projects to glue everything together. So you won’t just be reading — you’ll be building. 🛠️
Why Svelte Deserves Your Attention
If JavaScript frameworks were coffee ☕, here’s how I’d describe them:
- React → A double-shot espresso with 10 steps to order it. Powerful, but you need a guidebook.
- Vue → A latte with flavors. Smooth, beginner-friendly, but can get complex as you scale.
- Svelte → Someone just hands you a perfect cup. No ceremony, no extra sugar packets, no barista scribbles. Just coffee. Simple, hot, and effective.
So what makes Svelte different?
1. No Virtual DOM
React and Vue use a virtual DOM: they build a copy of the page in memory, figure out what changed, and update the browser. Smart, but it’s like taking notes before saying something.
Svelte skips the middleman. It compiles your components at build time into efficient, minimal JavaScript that updates the DOM directly. That means:
- Faster updates
- Smaller bundles
- Less boilerplate
2. Tiny Bundle Sizes
Here’s a silly but true fact: a fresh React app is already heavier than a fresh Svelte app with features. Svelte apps ship less JavaScript because the framework disappears at build time.
- React "Hello World": ~40kb+ ⚡
- Svelte "Hello World": ~1.6kb ⚡⚡⚡
Yes, it’s that dramatic.
3. Reactivity Built-In
In React, you write this:
import { useState } from "react";
function Counter() {
const [count, setCount] = useState(0);
return (
<button onClick={() => setCount(count + 1)}>
Count is {count}
</button>
);
}
Looks fine, right? But you had to:
- Import a hook
- Declare state
- Call a setter function
Now, the same in Svelte:
<script>
let count = 0;
</script>
<button on:click={() => count++}>
Count is {count}
</button>
That’s it. No hooks. No boilerplate. Just variables.. But aren't these the features that make React so awesome?
⚡ Quick reassurance: you’re not loosing features like hooks, effects, or context. Svelte just gives you different primitives that feel lighter but cover the same ground.
4. Developer Experience That Feels… Fun
Svelte’s syntax is deceptively simple. You spend less time thinking about framework mechanics and more time building features. That makes it not just productive, but honestly… kinda fun. 🎉
At this point, you might be thinking: “Okay, sounds cool. But can Svelte handle real-world apps, or is this another toy framework?”
That’s where SvelteKit comes in — the official app framework built on top of Svelte. With SvelteKit, you can do:
- Routing
- Server-side rendering (SSR)
- Static site generation (SSG)
- API routes
- Forms & actions
- Deploy anywhere (Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare)
So yes — Svelte isn’t just “fun.” It’s production-ready. 🚀
👉 In this series, we’ll start with Svelte itself (the core concepts) and then expand into SvelteKit for full-stack apps. One step at a time.
Who This Series is For
- React / Vue developers — you’ll see direct comparisons so you can map what you already know.
- Complete beginners — don’t worry if you’ve never touched React/Vue, we start from scratch.
- Seasoned devs — curious if SvelteKit can handle real-world, production apps? We've got you covered.
Basically: if you like building for the web, you’ll find value here.
Ready to Dive In?
Over the next few weeks (or today, depending on when you watch), we’ll go from “Hello Svelte” all the way to “deploying secure, production-grade apps with SvelteKit”.
By the end, you’ll not only understand Svelte inside-out — you’ll also be confident enough to use it in real projects. And maybe even convince your team to try it out. 😉
So grab a coffee ☕, fire up your terminal, and get ready.
In the next article, we’ll kick things off with:
👉 Part 1: Why Svelte? — The Value Proposition
Stay tuned, and let’s make frontend development fun again. 🎉
Follow me on DEV for future posts in this deep-dive series.
https://dev.to/a1guy
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Top comments (9)
Will you be using Svelte 5 with Runes in this series?
instead of:
let count = 0using:
let count = $state(0)Yep! This whole series is written for Svelte 5, so everything you’ll see uses the latest syntax and patterns.
LOL. AI "writers".
I admit I didn’t explicitly address the runes part and got roasted for that — totally fair 🙂
Just to clarify: in Svelte 5, runes aren’t a separate mode anymore, they’re fully integrated into the language (see the migration guide). So I don’t want to spell it out explicitly and add confusion — it’s just Svelte 5.
As for the code snippet in question: Svelte 5 is fully backwards compatible right now, which allows me to use an example syntax that JavaScript developers can intuitively understand. Since this is the intro to the series, and the primary audience is JS and React developers evaluating Svelte, I wanted to keep the example as familiar and approachable as possible.
Even the official Svelte site mixes the two styles depending on context — and I’ll be doing the same throughout this series: sometimes $state when it helps teach reactivity explicitly, and sometimes plain let when simplicity matters most..
You’re clearly a Svelte pro already 🙂— but the goal here is to ease beginners in before introducing the new $state syntax later.
Hmmm, so you say you will lure devs with one syntax and them bam! take this other one.
You should have stopped at the first paragraph, corrected the example and that's it. But that's just my opinion. Good luck mixing legacy with modern Svelte.
BTW, is against dev.to's rules to use AI to generate comment responses. AI writers will always be AI writers.
Did someone use AI to write a comment? My original comment was, well, original.
Why do you think my comment had any chance to be directed to you, Bob? Is it not clear that it is for Ali? Ali used AI to write the article, and his most recent response.
Ali doesn't know Svelte, or at the very minimum, Ali did not review the AI-written article and published it. You, Bob, very kindly pointed out the obvious to us that know Svelte: The example was Svelte 4. You were super polite trying to point the error out. Ali then comes and replies nonsense, demonstrating that your point completely flew over his head. I mocked Ali since I believe he actually doesn't know Svelte.
Finally, Ali comes and posts the mentioned "latest reply", which is clearly AI-generated. The response is non-sensical and tries to convince me (or him, or I don't know who) that it's a good idea to teach a mix of legacy and modern Svelte.
Thank brings us up to date to events.
Gotcha. Thanks
Guys i am not trying to convince anyone of anything here. I just gave my point of view and perspective. The series would be read by a variety of readers with diverse backgrounds, and not everyone is going to find it as per their taste, and that's okay.
Interestingly this raging debate is going on when the series has barely even started. If quality isn't up to the mark, the readers are smart enough to recognize that and move on to the next one, and i completely respect that.