🌱 Lightweight and Fast: Why I Built Sigment Instead of Using React

Tired of JSX, Babel, and slow builds? Sigment is a new lightweight JavaScript framework that brings fast, fine-grained reactivity — with zero boilerplate.

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✨ Why Sigment?

Most frontend frameworks today rely on concepts like Virtual DOM, JSX, transpilers like Babel, and heavy build pipelines. While powerful, they introduce complexity and slow down compile time — especially in large projects with many components.

Sigment was built to break that cycle:

• Zero JSX or Transpilers — use plain JavaScript tag functions like div()
• No Virtual DOM — DOM updates are direct and efficient
• Signal-Based Reactivity — inspired by fine-grained reactivity systems like SolidJS
• Faster Compilation — no need for Babel or JSX transforms means drastically faster builds

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🔧 Core Concepts

1. Clean, Functional Syntax

function Hello() {
  return div("Hello, world!")
}

2. Signals Made Simple

const [count, setCount] = signal(0);

const view = div(
  button({ onClick: () => setCount(count() + 1) }, "+1"),
  p(() => `Count is ${count()}`)
);

3. No JSX

Just plain JavaScript. What you write is what the browser sees — no build tools required.

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🚀 Runtime Performance

Sigment skips the diffing and reconciliation of Virtual DOM entirely. This leads to:

• Lower memory usage
• Faster startup and update times
• Easier debugging (no abstraction between your code and the DOM)

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📦 Automatic Optimization

Sigment includes built-in strategies for optimal rendering:

• Components are automatically cached when loaded at runtime
• Global state is simple and signal-based — no need for Redux
• Use navigateTo("dashboard", true) to preserve state across views

Memoization isn't needed by default, but if a component is heavy, you can use memoizeFunc() explicitly to optimize it.

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📁 Project Setup

You can start using Sigment in seconds:

npx create-sigment-app my-app
cd my-app
npm run dev

Built with TypeScript and Vite under the hood, but you can also run it without a build step if you prefer.

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🧠 Designed for Humans

Sigment is ideal for developers who want simplicity, speed, and full control over the DOM — without giving up reactivity.

• No more bloated configs
• No JSX mental overhead
• No virtual DOM penalty
• No Babel or transpile time — compilation is instant

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📚 Learn More

• Documentation
• GitHub
• Starter Template

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Made with ❤️ by developers who love simplicity.

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Tags: #javascript #webdev #frontend #framework

Comments

[Justin Alcendor]

I will have to give this a try. I’m always looking for new ideas for my future projects. Thank you!

[Sohel Tanvir]

thanks

[יאיר בן משה]

Awesome work! I really appreciate the explanation behind Sigment’s design choices. Definitely something I want to try out.