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What Bytes #186 Said About Million.js and the Virtual DOM

Bytes #186 introduced Million.js as a proposed React alternative using static and dynamic blocks. Its reported speed claim was not an independently verified benchmark.
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Bytes issue #186, published May 11, 2023, asked whether React’s virtual DOM needed a comeback—or whether a different approach could reduce its update work. Its feature introduced Million.js, a proposed React alternative built around blocks of static and dynamic content. The issue reported Million.js’s claim of being “up to 70% faster,” but that figure was not an independently verified benchmark. The practical point was narrower: the approach was presented as most promising for components with substantial static content and relatively infrequent changes.

What Bytes #186 covered

The May 11, 2023 issue framed its main feature around “One man’s Remix struggle, OSS Marketing 101, and every developer conference in the world happening at the same time.” Its central technical question was whether the virtual DOM should be discarded, with Million.js offered as a proposed way to reduce rendering work in React. Read the archived issue.

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The issue also included brief items on Remix, Google I/O, Vue 3.3, Prisma 4.14, Redwood v5, Dart 3, and other releases. Those were side notes; the virtual-DOM discussion was the feature.

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Is the virtual DOM slow?

Not inherently. A virtual DOM is a way for a UI framework to represent the interface, compare a new representation with an earlier one after state changes, and apply necessary updates to the browser’s real DOM. That work has a cost, but its existence does not prove an application is slow or that every alternative will be faster.

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In a 2018 article, Svelte author Rich Harris explained that runtime work can include both comparing virtual representations and creating new virtual elements or doing component computations during updates. He also described virtual DOM as useful for declarative, state-driven programming with performance that is generally good enough. That is Harris’s analysis, not a neutral benchmark of every framework or workload. Read his explanation of virtual DOM overhead.

Svelte takes a different route: its compiler can use information available at build time to generate targeted updates. That illustrates a broader trade-off between work performed at runtime and work arranged ahead of time; it does not establish a universal winner.

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What Million.js proposed

Bytes described Million.js, created by Aiden Bai, as a proposed React virtual-DOM replacement intended to retain React’s declarative programming model while reducing rendering work. Rather than treating every DOM element as a separate description, the library’s block-based approach groups static content and marks dynamic content.

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As the issue described it, developers could wrap React components in block(). Static analysis and dirty checking would then help identify and apply updates. The idea is to avoid doing unnecessary work for portions of a component that do not change, not to eliminate all rendering work.

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What the “up to 70% faster” claim means

Bytes reported Million.js’s claim that it could be “up to 70% faster.” That is a project claim relayed by the 2023 issue, not an independently validated result in the available evidence. It should not be read as a guaranteed improvement, a result for every React application, or a current performance measurement.

Performance depends on the workload and the comparison: how much of a component is static, how often it updates, what work the component performs, and what the benchmark measures. A meaningful decision requires testing representative application behavior rather than applying a single percentage to all projects.

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When the block approach may help

The issue characterized Million.js as more promising when content is largely static and changes infrequently. In that situation, distinguishing fixed content from dynamic regions may help avoid repeated work. If content changes frequently or much of the interface is dynamic, the potential gains shrink.

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  • Static-heavy interface: A component with large unchanged sections and a small number of changing values is closer to the use case Bytes described.
  • Highly dynamic interface: Frequent changes across much of the content leave less static work to bypass, so the claimed advantage may be smaller.
  • Existing React architecture: The issue presented Million.js as compatible with a React-style declarative model, but the evidence here does not establish present-day compatibility, API details, or maintenance status.

The issue relayed the creator’s advice to use the approach selectively rather than treating it as a universal replacement.

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How to evaluate it for a real application

  1. Identify a real bottleneck. Profile the application and find components whose updates contribute meaningfully to the problem; do not choose a replacement based only on a headline performance figure.
  2. Classify the component’s content. Determine what remains static and what changes, and how frequently updates occur. This is the workload distinction central to the block-based proposal.
  3. Check current project details. Verify the library’s current documentation, API, compatibility, and maintenance information before adopting it. The 2023 issue alone cannot establish those present-day facts.
  4. Benchmark comparable work. Compare the same representative interactions and output under consistent conditions. Measure the outcomes that matter to users and the application rather than assuming a reported maximum applies.
  5. Adopt narrowly if evidence supports it. If a targeted component improves without unacceptable complexity or compatibility costs, selective use is more consistent with the recommendation reported by Bytes than a wholesale migration.

What the issue does—and does not—establish

Bytes #186 is a historical introduction to Million.js’s block-based proposal and its intended trade-off. It establishes how the feature characterized the approach in May 2023; it does not establish Million.js’s current status, current React compatibility, or comparable present-day benchmark results. Rich Harris’s 2018 article provides a useful contrasting account of runtime diffing and compiler-generated updates, but it likewise is not a direct performance comparison with Million.js.

The durable takeaway is not that virtual DOM is obsolete or that one alternative is always faster. Rendering strategies shift work in different ways, and the useful choice depends on the application’s update patterns and measured results.

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