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SolidJS is a declarative JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It’s gaining popularity for its simplicity, performance, and reactivity. In this article, we’ll explore SolidJS, its features, and how it compares to other popular libraries like React.

Declarative and Reactive
SolidJS follows a declarative programming paradigm, similar to React. This means you describe the UI based on its state, and SolidJS handles the underlying updates for you. It also uses a reactive system, which means the UI automatically updates when the state changes.

JSX and TSX Support
SolidJS uses JSX (or TSX with TypeScript) for templating, making it easy to write and understand the UI components. JSX allows you to mix HTML-like syntax with JavaScript, creating a more expressive way to define UI components.

Component-based Architecture
Like React, SolidJS is built around the concept of components. Components are reusable, self-contained units of UI that manage their state and lifecycle. This makes it easier to build and maintain complex UIs.

Reactive Programming Model
SolidJS uses a reactive programming model, which means it automatically updates the UI when the underlying data changes. This makes it easier to build dynamic and interactive user interfaces.

JSX Templating
SolidJS uses JSX for templating, which allows you to write HTML-like code directly in your JavaScript files. This makes it easier to create and maintain UI components.

Performance Optimization
SolidJS is designed for performance. It uses a virtual DOM-like structure to minimize DOM updates, resulting in faster rendering times and a smoother user experience.

TypeScript Support
SolidJS has built-in support for TypeScript, which allows you to write type-safe code and catch errors at compile time. This can help you write more reliable and maintainable code.

Compare SolidJS and ReactJS

This is just a general compression of SolidJS and ReactJS to give us the general idea of the differences between the two. How they coup different challenges and how each approach and library make usage of it’s technology and software engineering paradigm to improve rendering performance and ease of write of code. For example Reactjs is Heavily using the Virtual DOM rendering approach while SolidJS usage the Fine-grained Reactivity rendering approach.

Code Examples

Let’s take a look at a basic SolidJS code example to get the idea of how SolidJS is different from other common front end library like ReactJS

// App.jsx
import { createSignal } from 'solid-js';

function App() {
    const [message, setMessage] = createSignal('Hello, World!');

    return (
        <div>
            <h1>{message()}</h1>
        </div>
    );
}

export default App;

Now Let’s take a look at the same result written in ReactJS to see the small difference, of course there are much more difference between the two front end libraries however we focus on simple code:

// App.jsx
import React, { useState } from 'react';

function App() {
    const [message, setMessage] = useState('Hello, World!');

    return (
        <div>
            <h1>{message}</h1>
        </div>
    );
}

export default App;

In the SolidJS example, we use the createSignal function to create a reactive signal for the message state. The {message()} syntax is used to access the current value of the signal.

In the ReactJS example, we use the useState hook to create a state variable for the message. The {message} syntax is used to directly access the current value of the state variable.

Lior Amsalem

Lior Amsalem embarked on his software engineering journey in the early 2000s, Diving into Pascal with a keen interest in creating, developing, and working on new technologies. Transitioning from his early teenage years as a freelancer, Lior dedicated countless hours to expanding his knowledge within the software engineering domain. He immersed himself in learning new development languages and technologies such as JavaScript, React, backend, frontend, devops, nextjs, nodejs, mongodb, mysql and all together end to end development, while also gaining insights into business development and idea implementation.

Through his blog, Lior aims to share his interests and entrepreneurial journey, driven by a desire for independence and freedom from traditional 9-5 work constraints.