stencil VS catalyst

First a disclosure: I never actually used Stencil, only played with it a bit locally in a hello-world project while writing this post.

This is my main concern too.

I don't understand why tools like this "pick a winner" with a specific framework instead of rendering to Web Components with a framework wrapper, or using something like Stencil[1] that can render to any framework.

[1] https://stenciljs.com/

I was recently able to sit down with some of the core members of Ionic, who also created Stencil a toolchain for building Design Systems and Progressive Web Apps. We talked at great length how typically companies are approaching Ionic from a Design Team and need help building components. As a developer I wanted to talk about the Web Components that are used within the Design System first. There was a decent amount of surprise, so I thought I would break down what a Design System is and why it doesn't matter which end you start with, as long as you have both your Design and Development teams working together to build your Design System.

Examples like this bug me. The React example is using a high level abstraction, the web component is directly using the API. A more accurate example would show how those React calls eventually boil down to document.createElement()

I don’t think the Web Components API was meant to be used directly all the time. You can use a framework like StencilJS:

https://stenciljs.com/

You might say that this is the same vicious cycle as JavaScript frameworks. That's wrong, because Web Components are interoperable by design. Choosing Stencil or Lit or any other library is a development convenience that has little to do with the interoperability of the resulting components.

Not sure about Vue but you can in Angular, though my experience with React components in Angular has not been pleasant. Libraries such as Stencil allow you to create native Web Componets from React components.

I guess my problem is more specific to my overall architecture. I have components that when are placed in the DOM, have props rendered on them by their parent elements. I'm using stencil to do this.

Reminds me of GitHub catalyst web component framework, which has targets & actions. https://github.com/github/catalyst

Working on the next Web UI (TypeScript + Catalyst).

Catalyst (opt-in via CLI flag)

They actually use a web component system, with a library called Catalyst used to make things a bit easier. They aren't simply doing raw DOM manipulation in Vanilla JavaScript, they're using components and what is essentially a fairly lightweight framework.

Personally, I'd really like to see the unmolested, with-dependencies versions[1].

This version is VERY easy to ship and adopt. But in my mind, these components hide how the sausage is made! Many were built with a library (Catalyst[2]), but the tools were obfuscated out in these end products.

There's a huge amount to be said for these web components. We need more models like this. But I also think there's an opportunity lost here, to teach, to inform, to help others learn how to build components, using the tech Github actually used to develop them.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26439167

[2] https://github.com/github/catalyst

GitHub Catalyst is a library that makes it easier to develop Web Components.

The only real escape is using something like /r/webcomponents. I did some playing around with Github's new Catalyst framework over the holidays, quite enjoyed it. But you'd be one of the only people on the planet using it. Stick with whatever works for you.