Yes, you're right, although there was a lot of churn in SvelteKit when it was in beta--maybe they had that in mind. Of course, it was marked as a beta, so it's hard to blame them too much. But I was using Kit heavily during that period and ended up getting frustrated by the whiplash, and then the addition of runes (which was announced in late 2023 even if it wasn't released until 2024) was what made me lose interest in Svelte. I still have some fondness for the framework though.

You're just forgetting.

1-2 basically a different templating language

2-3 basically a different templating language

4-5 compatible but changed again

That's 3 syntax changes over 4 versions.

IIRC Svelte 4 only existed to drop support for older browsers?