Vue 3.6 entered release-candidate stage in July, and with it Vapor Mode is finally feature-complete: single-file components that compile straight to direct DOM operations, skipping the virtual DOM entirely. A stable release is expected this autumn.
I use Vue daily in client work, so I care about this for the usual reasons - smaller bundles, faster updates. But I have a second, stranger reason to care: for the past while I've been hand-writing logic games for my personal site - a nonogram, a minesweeper variant, numberlink, mastermind, a 3D Rubik's cube with a built-in solver, a speedcubing timer. Each game is one page, no framework, no heavy libraries. Just state and direct DOM manipulation. And that experience is basically a preview of what Vapor Mode does - except I've been the compiler.
What you learn when there's no virtual DOM to hide behind
Take the nonogram. The board is a grid of cells; a click toggles one cell and possibly updates a couple of row/column clue indicators. In a naive framework mental model, the "view" is a function of the whole board state, and something diffs its way to the minimal change. Writing it by hand, you can't afford that mental model. You think in deltas: this click changes this cell's class and these two clue elements, nothing else. You write exactly those three DOM operations and you're done.
