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The Business Case for Vanilla JavaScript

https://lewiscampbell.tech/blog/250430.html
6•LAC-Tech•1y ago

Comments

copypaper•1y 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•1y ago
What benefits of a framework?

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

proc0•1y 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•1y 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•1y 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•1y 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•1y 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.

Engram – persistent memory for AI agents, in-process, no cloud

https://github.com/HBarefoot/engram
1•barefootdifital•34s ago•0 comments

Moving Back Home Used to Be a Sign of Failure. Now It Shows Financial Savvy

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/relationships/living-with-parents-finances-0c35530c
1•apparent•2m ago•0 comments

Cursed Gemstones – The Koh-I-Noor Diamond

https://www.vulcans-forge.com/blog/news/cursed-gemstones-the-koh-i-noor-diamond
1•thunderbong•3m ago•0 comments

Longcat

https://longc.at/longcat.html
1•willmeyers•3m ago•0 comments

Istota – a multi-user AI agent and personal OS

https://istota.cynium.com/
2•durakot•4m ago•0 comments

The Computers Used in Movies

https://www.starringthecomputer.com/computers.html
2•gitowiec•4m ago•1 comments

SOLAR: AI-Powered Speed-of-Light Performance Analysis

https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.26383
1•matt_d•8m ago•0 comments

Taphonomic analysis reveals behavioral & tech capabilities of Homo floresiensis

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aeb7219
1•bushwart•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Goldseam – heal broken Cypress selectors with a local LLM

https://github.com/adam-s/goldseam
1•dataviz1000•10m ago•0 comments

WSL Keeps Getting Better

https://www.xda-developers.com/wsl-keeps-getting-better-and-its-because-microsoft-is-finally-admi...
1•porridgeraisin•10m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Detecting AI slop with regex and Stephen King

https://github.com/guy-lifshitz/tacheles
1•shtofadhor•11m ago•0 comments

Why High-Earning Families Are Leaving Traditional Schools for AI

https://allk12.com/blog/why-high-earning-families-are-leaving-traditional-schools-for-ai
1•misterinfo•11m ago•0 comments

How Bending Spoons built a $23B tech empire from struggling brands

https://www.ft.com/content/040aac86-f458-400b-a353-7ff2ee5aa34f
1•chuckus•12m ago•1 comments

Dead Man's Switch and USB Kill Switch for Linux, Security Project

https://github.com/qxnode/luks-deadman
1•qxnode•13m ago•0 comments

Neoengineers

https://elijahpotter.dev/articles/neoengineers
1•chilipepperhott•15m ago•0 comments

Show HN: EdgeRunner – run GGUF models with Swift and Metal

https://github.com/christopherkarani/EdgeRunner
1•karc14•16m ago•0 comments

Plastic Free July Is Nonsense

https://bekopcho.substack.com/p/plastic-free-july-is-nonsense
1•clemesha•16m ago•0 comments

Handoff – a verified context bridge between Claude Code sessions

https://github.com/ostikwhy-blip/claude-code-handoff-skill
1•ostik•19m ago•0 comments

The Verification Horizon: No Silver Bullet for Coding Agent Rewards

https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.26300
1•matt_d•20m ago•0 comments

Nutrition Science's Most Preposterous Result

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/05/ice-cream-bad-for-you-health-study/673487/
1•paulpauper•20m ago•0 comments

Falling fertility on the left as key driver of US birth decline

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-57582-3
1•paulpauper•21m ago•0 comments

Is America Moving Left Economically?

https://hereticalinsights.substack.com/p/is-america-moving-left-economically
1•paulpauper•21m ago•1 comments

Show HN: I hated how much my 12-year-old played Roblox, so we built our own FPS

https://cooked.house
2•davitb•22m ago•0 comments

Orchestra Locks Horns with Copyright Cops over Works by Long-Dead Composers

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/music/orchestra-locks-horns-with-copyright-cops-over-works-by-lo...
2•impish9208•23m ago•1 comments

Combustion Engine Web-Based Simulator

https://combustionlab.net
1•mytuny•25m ago•0 comments

"These cameras are just like the Eye of Sauron"

https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.09239
7•dijksterhuis•31m ago•0 comments

Mark Zuckerberg tells staff that AI agents haven't progressed enough

https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/02/mark-zuckerberg-tells-staff-that-ai-agents-havent-progressed-as...
9•msolujic•32m ago•5 comments

Rust Service Isn't Leaking – It Could Be the Allocator

https://pranitha.dev/posts/rust-and-memory-allocators/
4•abhirag•32m ago•0 comments

From Socrates to Expert Systems

https://lafavephilosophy.x10host.com/dreyfus.html
1•cratermoon•33m ago•0 comments

ABI vs. API (2004)

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2004/02/msg00648.html
2•signa11•33m ago•0 comments