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The Business Case for Vanilla JavaScript

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

Comments

copypaper•6mo 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•6mo ago
What benefits of a framework?

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

proc0•6mo 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•6mo 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•6mo 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•6mo 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•6mo 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.

PolyAgora v1.0 – A Natural-Language Multi-Axis Cognitive OS (Whitepaper, DOI)

https://zenodo.org/records/17675442
1•takeshi_sakamo•1m ago•0 comments

Token Efficiency

https://www.june.kim/token-efficiency
1•speckx•1m ago•0 comments

Made a tool to detect process injection

https://github.com/pandaadir05/ghost
1•pandaadir05•2m ago•1 comments

The Future of Codewars

https://www.codewars.com/post/the-future-of-codewars-a-message-from-our-ceo
1•captn3m0•2m ago•0 comments

The Battle for the Soul of the University

https://macleans.ca/longforms/the-battle-for-the-soul-of-the-university/
1•binge_thinking•2m ago•0 comments

How PDF became the past, present and future of consent forms

https://formesign.com/fillable/fillable-pdf-to-form-merge.html
1•QueensGambit•6m ago•0 comments

Researcher's Smuggling Arrest Casts Light on Dispute over Chinese Students

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/world/asia/chinese-students-us.html
1•perihelions•7m ago•0 comments

You can make smells with ultrasound

https://writetobrain.com/olfactory
6•exr0n•12m ago•0 comments

Voxel Duke Nukem 3D

https://www.moddb.com/mods/voxel-duke-nukem-3d/addons/voxel-duke-3d
2•Venn1•13m ago•0 comments

What humans are meant to do

https://maximizinginterest.substack.com/p/what-humans-are-meant-to-do
1•anonisfree•14m ago•0 comments

Xbox Content Archive Tool (XCAT)

https://consolemods.org/wiki/Xbox:XCAT
1•varun_ch•14m ago•0 comments

Arvos, Stream iPhone Lidar, Camera, and IMU over WiFi

https://github.com/jaskirat1616/Arvos
1•jaskirat1216•14m ago•0 comments

Indiana Pi Bill

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_pi_bill
1•tmoertel•16m ago•0 comments

From idea to funding. Follow this

1•MCWiggy•19m ago•0 comments

Federate Away from GitHub

https://lambdaland.org/posts/2025-11-18_federate_your_forges/
1•speckx•19m ago•0 comments

X has changed their policy and now you can see where the accounts are based

https://bsky.app/profile/onestpress.onestnetwork.com/post/3m65wfkdpr22h
2•xnx•21m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Guardrail Layer, Open-Source AI Data Firewall, Role-Based Redaction

1•tcodeking•21m ago•0 comments

MemMachine, an open-source memory layer for advanced AI agents

https://github.com/MemMachine/MemMachine
2•jinqueeny•22m ago•0 comments

Leave the Em Dash Alone

https://danielmiessler.com/blog/leave-the-em-dash-alone
2•speckx•25m ago•0 comments

Freelance Marketplace for African Software Developers and Virtual Assistants

https://devdey.com
1•captainXYZ•25m ago•0 comments

A brain implant that could rival Neuralink's enters clinical trials

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03849-0
1•geox•27m ago•0 comments

Tuxedo Computers Cancels Snapdragon X1 Linux Laptop

https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/Discontinuation-of-ARM-notebooks-with-Snapdragon-X-Elite-SoC.t...
3•Venn1•29m ago•0 comments

GraphLite: An Embeddable Graph Database with ISO Graph Query Language Support

https://github.com/GraphLite-AI/GraphLite
3•cpard•32m ago•0 comments

Point-of-Care Transesophageal Echocardiography in Emergency and Intensive Care

https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9059/13/11/2680
3•PaulHoule•32m ago•0 comments

AgentxSuite – Open-Source Control Plane for AI Agents Using MCP

2•aliparnan•32m ago•0 comments

Next general training environment for superintelligence?

https://shash42.substack.com/p/automated-scientific-discovery-as
1•shash42•34m ago•1 comments

Block Lamp

https://arslan.io/2025/01/25/my-first-lighting-design-block-lamp/
3•wonger_•35m ago•0 comments

The Harvard Endowment's Biggest Public Investment Is Now Bitcoin

https://gizmodo.com/the-harvard-endowments-biggest-public-investment-is-now-bitcoin-2000686439
3•paulpauper•36m ago•1 comments

ChatGPT in Systematic Investing – Enhancing Risk-Adjusted Returns with LLMs

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5680782
1•paulpauper•36m ago•0 comments

What Now? Handling Errors in Large Systems

https://brooker.co.za/blog/2025/11/20/what-now.html
2•SchwKatze•37m ago•0 comments