One Developer Ditched Vue and React to Build Their Own Framework — Here's What They Learned
This project shows that the mainstream frameworks still leave real gaps for certain use cases — especially around fine-grained rendering control and transparent internals. For Western developers, it's a signal that the frontend ecosystem may still have room for new approaches, and that the trade-offs of existing frameworks aren't settled science.
After struggling to build a complex visual editor with Vue, React, and Solid, a Chinese developer decided to create their own frontend framework from scratch. The result is Vitarx, a framework designed around three core principles: signal-level precise updates (no diff overhead), a runtime view tree (for flexible rendering orchestration), and a fully transparent component system with no black boxes.
Vitarx uses a doubly linked list for dependency management in its reactive system, which the developer claims enables more efficient tracking and triggering than Vue's approach. The view system converts JSX into lightweight view objects rather than a virtual DOM, and the renderer is completely replaceable — developers can swap between DOM, Canvas, or WebGL backends by implementing a simple interface.
Benchmark tests show Vitarx outperforming Vue 3.6 and React 19 in partial updates, row selection, and deletion scenarios, though it lags behind in full table creation and updates. The framework also ships smaller bundles: 17 KB compressed versus 22.9 KB for Vue and 51.4 KB for React. The developer acknowledges that custom frameworks aren't for everyone, recommending them only for projects with extreme performance needs, deep customization requirements, or teams with sufficient technical resources.
The fact that a single developer could build a competitive framework in two years says as much about the maturity of the frontend ecosystem as it does about the developer's skill — the building blocks are now well understood.
The benchmark results are interesting but should be taken with a grain of salt: Vitarx wins on partial updates but loses on full table creation and updates, which are common real-world scenarios.
The developer's decision to build a custom framework rather than contribute to existing ones reflects a broader tension in open source: sometimes the fastest path to a solution is to start fresh, even if it fragments the ecosystem.
The emphasis on 'no black boxes' and transparent internals suggests that developer frustration with framework opacity is a real pain point that mainstream frameworks haven't fully addressed.
The roadmap includes AI integration and WebAssembly optimization, which hints at where the developer sees the frontend landscape heading — but these are listed as low priority, suggesting they're more aspirational than concrete.