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design system engineering code libs

Design System code libs in 2023, Jan edition

What JS libs should you build your Design System in 2023?

Sun Feb 05 2023

The State of JS 2022 article just came out.

tl;dr Stick to one web tech in addition to CSS, possibly lit or native web-components.


React

React is not the only tool to rule them all, like the last 2 years. Lots of market share taken by players like Next, Svelte, Astro etc. They are collaborating with Next. Will continue being the most popular. Should learn and have it on resume. Seems like it will sustain the way of jQuery.

Verdict: TBD


Angular

It is not 2017 or 2018 anymore. The growth of Angular seems to have stymied. Does not seem like they have any huge growth spikes ahead. It does not make any sense to build a design system component library from scratch in Angular.

Verdict: Nope


Vue

Not a huge growth curve ahead. Seems to have the same heavy payload issues as React. Not as popular as React. Has Nuxt as a meta-level framework. Has been delightful for developers, but beginning to fall out of flavor.

Verdict: Nope


Svelte

This seems to be coming into a huge growth curve, along with Svelte Kit. The bundle size is way small like under 10KB compared to React’s 30KB+. It has a compiler that produces more server rendered code. Very appealing to developers in 2023.

Verdict: Maybe


Solid

This one seems to be similar in favor to Svelte, although not as high in adoption.

Verdict: Maybe (low)


Next

They are a popular starter meta framework for React. They got SSG, SSR down. They continue to invest and have a solid delivery. Vercel’s hosting makes them appealing. Lots of higher order functionality.


Astro

First popular content-focused web framework. Releases their 2.0. Will see a huge growth curve and popular adoption in 2023. Astro Islands will make it a huge favorable platform in the field of docs for Design Systems.

This one is of particular interest for me professionally.


This is a quick article intended as a mind share and mental notes for me to refer back to you. If you are reading this, thank you for taking the time.

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