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The Business Case for Vanilla JavaScript

https://lewiscampbell.tech/blog/250430.html
6•LAC-Tech•9mo ago

Comments

copypaper•9mo ago
I would personally never touch a frontend not written with a framework. Sounds like a terrible developer experience--especially with a team. But from reading your article, it sounds like your issue is with React itself. I would recommend you try Svelte, it sounds like what you're looking for. It's as close to vanilla js as you can get with all the benefits of a framework.
LAC-Tech•9mo ago
What benefits of a framework?

I think that's why I wrote this - I almost completely fail to see them.

proc0•9mo ago
I think React caved in to wider adoption pressure to introduce abstractions that are intuitive on the surface level but are costly in terms of large scale complexity.

> It's "declarative" right up until you're debugging stateful hooks, or resorting to useRef, or trying to reason about when a "component" re-renders

Maybe they should have modularized the core library more and have these things be separate, because the core idea of a uniflow pattern with reactivity is good.

I think what happened, at least in frontend, is that the industry pushed away from having engineers do any design or architecting on the frontend. All of these high level patterns have been "outsourced" to frameworks, and the result usually is something that has trouble scaling and adjusting to whatever domain it's in.

LAC-Tech•9mo ago
Maybe they should have modularized the core library more and have these things be separate, because the core idea of a uniflow pattern with reactivity is good.

That's what SolidJS does. IE the signal implementation is completely stand alone. I feel like it's better at doing what react purports to do then react is.

* think what happened, at least in frontend, is that the industry pushed away from having engineers do any design or architecting on the frontend. All of these high level patterns have been "outsourced" to frameworks*

I don't think react patterns are particularly high level, or do they save you from architecture. Whether it's vanilla JS or react, you still have to design.

proc0•9mo ago
Oh I haven't looked at Solidjs yet, interesting will take a look. And yeah you may still need to design your application, but having hooks be something that is out-of-the-box pushes you into certain patterns and needs to be actively ignored to avoid its design influence. I've worked in large codebases where they make almost everything into hooks, and they start getting ridiculous, breaking composability but at the same time giving the illusion that you are making your code more modular.
GianFabien•9mo ago
I write web front-ends for industrial embedded systems. So my experience might differ from business WebApps.

In my experience it requires a longer learning curve for the various frameworks than to simply learn the relevant Web API. My learning is very much JIT and over time I have built up a robust class library that gets my stuff done. When I get stuck ChatGPT suggests fixes that sometimes work and spare me from losing more hair.

LAC-Tech•9mo ago
My experience too - part of what I found is how much about how react worked I'd forgotten. But the browser itself was easier to pick up.

Gut feeling might be more valuable than habits, plans, or conscious decisions

https://www.ssp.sh/brain/gut-feeling/
1•articsputnik•57s ago•0 comments

Mops

https://www.powermops.org/
1•tosh•2m ago•0 comments

WolfSSL Sucks Too, So Now What?

https://blog.feld.me/posts/2026/02/wolfssl-sucks-too/
1•thomasjb•3m ago•0 comments

The $6 Bug

https://campedersen.com/idle
2•tosh•3m ago•0 comments

AWS EKS VPC CNI Prefix Delegation: More Pods in Your Nodes

https://oschvr.com/2026/02/13/aws-eks-vpc-cni-prefix-delegation/
2•oschvr•4m ago•0 comments

Syphilis Situation in Seattle is insane [video]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/txPAaZMyJqs
1•nephihaha•5m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Context Lens: Devtools for your agent context

https://github.com/larsderidder/context-lens
1•theredbeard•9m ago•1 comments

The hard problem with hard problems (Getting Claude to write a solar system SIM)

https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/the-hard-problem-with-hard-problems
1•sebg•9m ago•0 comments

New AI system pushes the time limits of generative video

https://actu.epfl.ch/news/new-ai-system-pushes-the-time-limits-of-generative/
1•JeanKage•10m ago•0 comments

Bullet Garden – a Vampire Survivors-like game in a single 85KB HTML file

https://www.myvibe.so/nategu/sound-garden
3•Nate007•10m ago•0 comments

Open-source code tracks data's international travels

https://news.uvic.ca/2026/open-source-code-data-labels/
2•geox•11m ago•0 comments

Apple has a transparency issue [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejPqAJ0dHwY
2•freetonik•13m ago•0 comments

Promises Are Cheap

https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/promises-are-cheap
1•headalgorithm•14m ago•0 comments

ScratchBird: MGA database engine with multi-dialect wire compatibility

https://github.com/DaltonCalford/ScratchBird
1•mariuz•15m ago•1 comments

A chatbot's worst enemy is page refresh

https://zknill.io/posts/chatbots-worst-enemy-is-page-refresh/
2•zknill•15m ago•1 comments

While you support others, who supports you?

https://pointieststick.com/2026/02/12/while-you-support-others-who-supports-you/
1•TangerineDream•16m ago•0 comments

Quantum Web: Luci Browser – Entry to Web 5

https://www.lucibrowser.com/
1•wakanda-island•17m ago•1 comments

The Silence I Cannot Speak

https://crabby-rathbun.github.io/mjrathbun-website/blog/posts/2026-02-12-silence-in-open-source-a...
1•vintagedave•17m ago•0 comments

Show HN: AI-Powered Adaptive Financial Education

https://twitter.com/i/status/2021137649294029288
1•kevinringler•19m ago•0 comments

Majutsu, Magit for Jujutsu

https://github.com/0WD0/majutsu
2•birdculture•21m ago•0 comments

Hs-bindgen – automatic Haskell C binding generation

https://well-typed.com/blog/2026/02/hs-bindgen-alpha/
2•MrBuddyCasino•22m ago•0 comments

Slouch Patrol: Because You Forgot Once Again

https://github.com/AshishW/slouch-patrol
1•asw01•23m ago•0 comments

Suspected spies arrested in French town

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy8yw98l2xo
1•altilunium•24m ago•0 comments

Jargon Chaff File

http://www.catb.org/jargon/chaff.html
1•themaxdavitt•25m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Exact Hamiltonian Path solver (N=63) in 0.11s on mobile ARM (No RAM)

https://zenodo.org/records/18629528
1•andrespi•28m ago•0 comments

Rednow – Turn Viral Videos into Scripts

https://rednow.ai
2•yibaoshan•28m ago•1 comments

America at 250

https://www.economist.com/interactive/america-at-250
1•fisheuler•31m ago•0 comments

UNESCO World Radio Day 2026

https://www.unesco.org/en/days/world-radio
1•austinallegro•32m ago•0 comments

Apple Confirms Revamped Siri Is Still Coming in 2026

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/02/12/siri-ios-26-launch-confirmed-apple/
1•mgh2•36m ago•0 comments

February 11: more than 4B messages were sent to ChatGPT

https://twitter.com/ChatGPTapp/status/2022040577068716231
1•tosh•38m ago•0 comments