Getting Started with SolidJS

Ryan Carniato, author of SolidJS, introduces SolidStart, the new starter for SolidJS. This talk looks at what motivated its creation and explores how Vite both was critical in its inception and has been instrumental in evolving how we approach developing for the future.

SolidJS is a declarative JavaScript library for creating user interfaces. Instead of using a Virtual DOM, it compiles its templates to real DOM nodes and updates them with fine-grained reactions. Declare your state and use it throughout your app, and when a piece of state changes, only the code that depends on it will rerun.

Solid stands on the shoulders of giants, particularly React and Knockout. If you have developed with React Functional Components and Hooks before, Solid will feel very natural because it follows the same philosophy as React, with unidirectional data flow, read/write segregation, and immutable interfaces.

It may feel even more natural because Solid’s update model is simpler and has no Hook rules. Components execute just once, when they are first rendered, and Hooks and bindings only execute when their dependencies update. This completely different implementation forgoes a Virtual DOM.

Video producer https://viteconf.org/