I agree with you that this is a worthwhile comparison to make, but would also point out that you could compare Web Components to any JS framework. When Web Components reach maturity (i.e. when support is baked into browsers and you don't have to fall back on using libraries like Polymer), they'll hopefully signal the end of JS frameworks as we know them, as it'll be easy to mix and match components from multiple sources. Until that time comes, I welcome JS frameworks like Stimulus that can (supposedly) be easily retrofitted onto existing websites, even if I'd prefer to see more activity around Web Components.
Support is now baked into most browsers for Web components!
Also Polymer Lit-HTML and HyperHTML leverage JS Template Literals to natively update the DOM as fast or faster than virtual DOM using much less resource.
If you feel this is a lazy request please let me know, but could you point me to the source code for using native JS string templates to do Dom updating that achieve similar things to Virtual DOM?
