Did Svelte gain the adoption like React and Vue ? I am not sure how mature the ecosystem is. I am always wary of using things in production that have not gained significant adoption.
It shares a space with React and Vue in terms of positive opinions. Opinions are worse since v5 due to the perceived increase in complexity of using the Runes system.
It is the fourth most used JS framework behind React, Vue, and Angular.
At least anecdotally I see job listings mostly for React, with some for Vue and Angular, with almost no Svelte. I think I did see one company mention Svelte, so at least someone is building on it, but to a much lesser degree than any of the major players.
From what I recall, they nuked the ergonomics/what made Svelte great with the runes api (Svelte 4?) and most people begrudgingly switched over to React, because, why not at that point.
Runes got introduced with svelte 5 and they address some problems that really bite when your components become complex and just weren’t solvable in the old paradigm.
I think svelte is still very ergonomic to use. Having to write $state() when declaring reactive variables is not a big deal and neither is writing $effect instead of $:.
I think the real reason the hype has waned a little is a combination of time, LLMs really liking React and generally absorbing any spare attention.
YMMV, but I don't agree. I was building very complicated UI's with Svelte before runes (multiple layers of state, complex d3 + webgl visuals in the UI, etc.) and loved Svelte. Runes completely nuked the vanilla feel of Svelte, so I determined I may as well just use React. I know other people did the same (just look at the evolution of dev tools for Anthropic's research post-runes, or popular news rooms that once used Svelte but now don't).
The main issue I had with Svelte was building real full-stack applications, where Sveltekit itself certainly felt behind its peers, but that's unrelated to runes/signals.
It's certainly not a rare viewpoint, just click on any link about "svelte runes" to see people upset.
You do raise a good point that LLMs make React much easier to adopt these days. Again, in my case the switch happened before I found LLMs effective for the sort of work I was doing, (but now it's a no-brainer to default to react).
