Guess I missed that. That makes sense, it's an interesting trade-off though. I suspect that including Vue via a script tag is not how the majority of users implement Vue; and therefore clinging to the virtual DOM may be a net-negative for most use cases. Personally, I am using Vue for a data-intensive app where performance really really matters. Although, I understand how broadening access to the framework increases availability and adoption; and for most use cases these performance considerations don't have any real world implications.
It is interesting though looking across benchmarks though and seeing non virtual DOM frameworks crushing their counterparts in terms of speed. I wonder if we'll see more growth in that space in the future.
You may be aware but it's also important to note that everyone is trying to cheat these benchmarks so they don't mean much. The implementations aren't data driven and don't look much like how we'd write real world code. See the discussions here including the linked issues and PRs https://github.com/krausest/js-framework-benchmark/issues/77...
they certainly did, lol. the tradeoff is the same it's been; they want all of vue available in a script tag.