Bytes issue #41, published March 28, 2021, led with SvelteKit entering public beta. Its “BFFs who share the hobby of bashing React” line is a joke—not a technical case against React. The substantive story is how SvelteKit was taking shape and why its team chose Vite over Snowpack.
What Bytes #41 was about
Bytes #41 appeared on March 28, 2021, reporting that SvelteKit had entered public beta the previous week. The issue’s main feature was “SvelteKit Enters Public Beta.” The React-bashing phrase is a humorous framing of the people involved, not evidence that the issue establishes React’s technical shortcomings.
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What SvelteKit offered in its 2021 beta
In his March 23 announcement, Rich Harris described SvelteKit as a framework for building Svelte applications, with server-side rendering, routing, code splitting, and adapters for serverless platforms. These are capabilities Harris described at the time of the public beta; they should not be read as a specification of current SvelteKit releases.
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Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Beta status mattered. Harris said the software had known bugs and missing features. The New York Times was using it for county risk pages, but Harris cautioned against treating that example as a general endorsement: “Using unfinished software to build an app that will be seen by millions of people is a risk, and in general I don’t recommend it.” The example showed that production use was possible, not that the beta was finished or risk-free.
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Why the team chose Vite instead of Snowpack
Snowpack had influenced SvelteKit’s early direction, but the team compared it with Vite 2 and concluded that Vite was a closer fit for SvelteKit’s needs. Harris’s reasons were specific to that 2021 evaluation:
- Framework neutrality: Vite was no longer Vue-centric and could support SvelteKit without being tied to one framework.
- Server-side rendering: Vite had SSR designed into its core, relevant to a framework that included server rendering.
- CSS code splitting: Vite included this capability, which better matched what SvelteKit needed.
Harris summarized the choice this way: “When we evaluated the two technologies side-by-side we were forced to conclude that Vite is a closer match for SvelteKit’s requirements and would give us the best chance to deliver the framework of our imaginations.” This explains a project decision at that point in time; it is not a general verdict that Vite is always preferable to Snowpack or that the same comparison describes current releases.
Vite’s official site now describes a frontend build tool with native-ESM development, hot module replacement, optimized builds, a plugin system, and SSR support. Those present-day descriptions belong to Vite’s current product, not to the historical reasons Harris gave for choosing Vite 2.
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Does this issue show why developers criticize React?
No. The issue’s “bashing React” line is a quip, and Harris’s beta announcement explains a SvelteKit tooling decision. Neither provides a systematic critique of React, nor supports a claim that React is technically inferior.
For period context, the State of JS 2020 front-end frameworks survey described React and Vue as leaders while Svelte was emerging as a contender. The survey distinguishes satisfaction, interest, usage, and awareness; these measure different things and should not be collapsed into a single ranking or interpreted as current market share.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Other links in the issue
Beyond its main SvelteKit story, Bytes #41 briefly introduced vanilla-extract, a way to author styles in TypeScript or JavaScript with locally scoped classes and CSS variables, generating static CSS at build time. The issue also linked to a Laurie Barth article, a Svelte and SvelteKit tutorial, and a Svelte course by Rich Harris. Those links are part of the 2021 issue; their present-day availability is not established here.
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