You still have transfer the JS.
- Primitives already present from the server render are serialized directly into the HTML, and the compiled code reads those values from the DOM
- Everything else is split into fine grain chunks, assigned a special identifier (Qwik uses URLs) which is serialized to the HTML to fetch (which can be eager or on-demand) and activate interactivity as needed
My understanding is that currently Qwik serializes more than necessary—i.e. can be optimized further to eliminate non-interactive chunks from consideration—but that they’re focused on reducing JS cost first.
How I wish something, anything better could've taken over. .NET was beautiful to work in. Maybe the native apps for iOS or Android are cleaner (I dunno, never tried).
But browsers are what the world use, and they only speak HTML and Javascript (sadly). So we're stuck unless something else manages to create a sea change in how the world uses the internet.