Lessons learned: rebuild Twitter web app

Great article from the core member of the original team that built the Twitter web app. He describes how he would approach building an app like Twitter nowadays.

• No React Native for Web: They used React Native for Web but not for its main selling point - cross-platform components. Instead, they used it for default styling, automatic LTR/RTL text direction swapping, and some performance help. It was not the best experience for the team, and it had impact on performance.

• Solid-js or another non-virtual DOM framework: He doesn't want large cascading effects when updating something in a virtual DOM tree (so React-like frameworks). He prefers frameworks like Solid.

• Use Tailwind CSS, not CSS-in-JS: Tailwind is the best for almost all new projects. CSS-in-JS solutions are too heavy.

• Use Vite or TurboPack: Webpack has reached its peak, most likely Vite is the best option now.

• Split into multiple applications with module federation: Split the app into smaller apps to make code reviews, CI and deploys faster. Then use Module Federation (micro frontends) to glue it all together.

• Deno vs Node.js: Possibly consider Deno over Node, it has nicer core APIs, better patterns and ergonomics.

• HTTP server framework: Surprisingly, not a lot of would have changed with a faster web server. Therefore, the main contenders would be either Express or Fastify (or Oak in Deno).