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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.

Show HN: I made email signatures less boring

https://esigna.app
1•rodgetech•2m ago•0 comments

Emily Wilson on Translations and Language (Ep. 63)

https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/emily-wilson/
1•paulpauper•6m ago•0 comments

How To Choose A Subproblem

https://millicosm.substack.com/p/how-to-choose-a-subproblem
2•paulpauper•6m ago•0 comments

On Being a Conservative

https://casssunstein.substack.com/p/on-being-a-conservative
2•paulpauper•6m ago•0 comments

OneCLI Is Live on the 1Password Marketplace

https://onecli.sh/blog/onecli-1password-marketplace
2•Jonathanfishner•7m ago•0 comments

Turning robot video into training-ready data

https://www.eventual.ai/blog/announcing-daft-physical-ai
1•DISCURSIVE•13m ago•0 comments

Show HN: AI Secretary – Stop checking your phone "just in case"

https://github.com/mathigatti/telegram-ai-secretary
1•mathigatti•18m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Yaml2json.com, YAML/JSON converter that runs in the browser

https://yaml2json.com
1•zacattack8•18m ago•0 comments

Generative Bionics launches Gene.01 ahead of shipyard welding trials

https://runtimewire.com/article/generative-bionics-gene01-tactile-humanoid-shipyard-trials
1•ryanmerket•18m ago•0 comments

FDE Interview Questions

https://superml.org/tutorials/fde-interview-questions
2•bps1418•20m ago•0 comments

With the Help of Codex: A Reproducible Proof Against the Jacobian Conjecture

https://blog.clidey.com/a-reproducible-proof-against-the-jacobian-conjecture/
2•hemangkandwal•21m ago•0 comments

Agent Search Engine – an independent, hand-audited index of 247 AI agents

https://agentsearchengine.app
1•ASE-APP•22m ago•0 comments

Flathub's AI slop ban looks like it was the right call

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/07/flathub-ai-slop-ban-data
4•csmantle•24m ago•0 comments

Huawei Just Built an Impossible Chip [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ekndZwyOzo
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Show HN: Ekko – PQC encryption inside of your keyboard

https://useekko.app/
3•kvasilev•29m ago•0 comments

A Meta-Epistemological Reason for Rejecting AI-Written Philosophy

https://dailynous.com/2026/07/16/a-meta-epistemological-reason-for-rejecting-ai-written-philosophy/
1•zetamax•30m ago•0 comments

Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

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5•StatsAreFun•35m ago•0 comments

The surprising benefits of red light

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/07/20/the-surprising-benefits-of-red-light
1•andsoitis•39m ago•0 comments

Quickly rewrite Git repository history

https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo
2•modinfo•40m ago•0 comments

The Networking Wars: How Microsoft Crushed Novell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GAYaBU1SLQ
4•cable2600•41m ago•0 comments

Made $500k in 2 weeks and found 6 jobs. Here are the 7 prompts that I used

https://github.com/zfoong/Here-are-the-N-prompts-that
1•zfoong•45m ago•2 comments

A quick note on OmniWM, open source, and why giving credit matters

https://github.com/BarutSRB/OmniWM/discussions/497
2•mmcclure•46m ago•0 comments

Best Coding Fonts for Developers in 2026

https://www.jstools.space/blog/best-coding-fonts/
3•javatuts•46m ago•2 comments

Datasette Dashboards

https://romain-clement.net/projects/datasette-dashboards/
2•ankitg12•47m ago•0 comments

The Graph Was the Cheap Part

https://cameronwestland.com/the-graph-was-the-cheap-part/
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OpenCircuitX

https://github.com/openlab-x/OpenCircuitX
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OpenAI Says Model Broke Out of Sandbox

https://twitter.com/kimmonismus/status/2079276434586210745
3•derangedHorse•50m ago•0 comments

$100 million for open source: A milestone built by the community

https://github.blog/open-source/maintainers/100-million-for-open-source-a-milestone-built-by-the-...
1•chmaynard•52m ago•0 comments

The road to epsilon-zero: Nim always ends, even with infinite ordinals

https://blog.plover.com/math/ordinals/02-wellfoundedness.html
2•pavel_lishin•58m ago•0 comments

MAGA Media Lap Up Trump's Election-Interference Exaggerations

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/maga-media-lap-up-trumps-election-interference-exaggerations/
1•petethomas•59m ago•0 comments