My Experience with Svelte: A Framework Not Ready for Big Projects nor Heavy-Duty Apps

After getting recommendations from some friends, I decided to give Svelte a shot in four different apps.

To be fair, it was a smooth experience, but it quickly became apparent that Svelte isn't nearly as mature as React or Vue.

In terms of its ecosystem and community, Svelte still feels underdeveloped. It’s not there yet when it comes to handling large-scale, complex apps.

That’s why I was quite surprised when a CTO of one of my friend's companies decided to use Svelte for all of their work. In hindsight, it turned out to be a poor decision.

While I’d definitely recommend Svelte for small and lightweight projects, like simple landing pages or basic apps, I wouldn’t suggest using it for anything that requires scalability or serious heavy lifting.

In our own work, we’ve used Next.js, Nuxt, Gridsome, and Astro—and compared to Svelte, these frameworks are far more mature and better suited for complex applications.

I can't help but wonder if some decisions to use Svelte come from a dislike of JavaScript or even a specific distaste for React or Vue.

But making such choices can quickly lead to a pile of complex, unscalable code. Sarcasm aside, you might as well decide to build a house on quicksand at that point!