Take a Qwik Break from React with Astro

Paul Scanlon compares React to Qwik using several examples (code included). He concludes that Qwik is worth exploring as a React alternative.

Before we get going, a disclaimer: I love React but sometimes, I really don’t need it.

Many of my recent projects have been built using Astro (which by default ships zero JavaScript to the client — superb for fast, lightweight and performant content websites). But on occasion, I have needed a little bit of client-side JavaScript to enable interactivity. At this point, I’ve found myself struggling to decide between regular Vanilla JavaScript or React.

On one hand, Vanilla JavaScript is generally more lightweight than React, but it can become difficult to maintain. React somewhat solves this problem, but for minimal client-side JavaScript requirements, it is a bit of a beast.

For these reasons (and a number of others) I started to investigate alternatives to React. And lo and behold, I discovered Qwik.