I've been deceiving you all. I had you believe that Svelte was a UI framework — unlike React and Vue etc, because it shifts work out of the client and into the compiler, but a framework nonetheless.

But that's not exactly accurate. In my defense, I didn't realise it myself until very recently. But with Svelte 3 around the corner, it's time to come clean about what Svelte really is.

Svelte is a language.

Specifically, Svelte is an attempt to answer a question that many people have asked, and a few have answered: what would it look like if we had a language for describing reactive user interfaces?

A few projects that have answered this question: