I take “pure overhead” to mean a cost with literally no benefit. To me that just makes it sound like Svelte is being pushed by idiots, because clearly there’s a substantial benefit (regardless of whether or not VDOM is an optimal strategy).

From the end of this article: “Virtual DOM is valuable because it allows you to build apps without thinking about state transitions, with performance that is generally good enough. That means less buggy code, and more time spent on creative tasks instead of tedious ones.“

Okay great, it’s not pure overhead.