When comparing Polymer vs Inferno, the Slant community recommends Polymer for most people. In the question“What are the best JavaScript libraries for building a UI?” Polymer is ranked 4th while Inferno is ranked 15th. The most important reason people chose Polymer is:
It provides a base component.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Various basic components
It provides a base component.
Pro HTML markup is not string
HTML markup as it can be a non-string.
Pro Flex layout components
It provides Flex layout components.
Pro CSS is easy to apply
CSS can be applied far more comfortably than React.
Pro No need for special debugging tools
The presence od specialized debugging tools are advertised by competitors. The all features of web components are natively supported by browser embedded development tools.
Pro Excellent routing
The router is embedded into CLI for project creation and covers as web as Progressive web app, also fused with Polymer layouts out of the box. The shop template for CLI has a complete solution including the routing.
Pro Complete web app stack support
Full app stack from data tier to routing, progressive web app, responsive layouts makes no need to seek outside of Polymer ecosystem for application features.
In addition to waste set of mature web components in Polymer Elements along with Vaadin Elements there are thousands of web components in the wild comparable to jQuery plugins set.
Pro Excellent documentation
Polymer guides you as with tools (cli, build environment, app templates,..) as with complimentary documentation on all phases of app development from creation of app as progresive web app to production deployment instructions.
As Polymer is standards based, the whole community around those standards also helping in documentation and support.
Pro Based on web components
Web Components are a collection of specifications released by W3C as a way to reduce the complexity of web apps by creating reusable components. Browser support is currently poor for web components, however Polymer is developed to make web components compatible with modern browsers.
Pro API is easy to understand, based on standard
The Polymer APIs are split on application layers and follow standards on all possible ways: Web Components, CSS variables, async API via Promises and so on.
Pro Modular
Use it however you want in a framework of your own custom design. When things change in the industry, swap things out instead of being locked in by someone else's design.
Pro Pretty light-weight
Inferno weighs in at 9kb gzipped, which is light-weight.
Pro Fast performance
Inferno is one of the fastest UI libraries around and widely considered the fastest.
Pro React compatability
Using the Inferno compatibility package ("inferno-compat"), Inferno can support the vast majority of React codebases.
Cons
Con No server-side rendering
Polymer does not support server-side rendering. This results in higher loading times, more HTTP requests and it's not very SEO friendly, since search engines have no way of indexing a page if it's not rendered in the server.
Con Some React components may not work with Inferno
Inferno and React have different public and private APIs. If 3rd party components use a private API then it's almost certainly going to break when you use it with Inferno.
Once React Fiber is implemented, even libraries that are currently working will break and will not be supported by Inferno.
Con Not very popular
Which can hinder one's opinion of its future, but the future of all "frameworks" is to break things into smaller pieces, so inferno very well might get used by the big names in the future.