None of the good frameworks really do any more DOM operations than any other. It's all about how you find out which set of DOM operations need to be done. Svelte does this with a compiler, Lit does it with tagged template literals, and a bunch do it with vdom.
Calculating the vdom diff is pure overhead in that if you have better syntax (or a compiler) you can just skip it.
They don't because since React set the bar, any new framework that didn't solve the problem VDOM did in some way, was dead on arrival.
If Svelte way is better at minimizing and batching DOM updates, they should probably argue and show that, not misrepresent what VDOM does (while blaming strawmanning on others no less).
> any new framework that didn't solve the problem VDOM did in some way, was dead on arrival.
Most frameworks before and after React were solving that problem one way or another.
The reason React won was that V = f(S) turned out to be most user-friendly solution. VDOM is exactly what Rich is saying: a means to efficiently implement V = f(S)
Vue/MobX are another, better iteration on the same idea. Svelte, arguably, is even better iteration.
Calculating the vdom diff is pure overhead in that if you have better syntax (or a compiler) you can just skip it.