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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.

Sandboxing Coding Agents

https://micahflee.com/sandboxing-coding-agents/
1•jbegley•1m ago•0 comments

Lenovo XClarity Administrator in FreeBSD Bhyve VM

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2026/08/28/lenovo-xclarity-administrator-in-freebsd-bhyve-vm/
1•vermaden•3m ago•0 comments

They confided in ChatGPT. Their secrets ended up in court.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/08/27/chatgpt-chats-are-being-swept-into-civil-cri...
1•bookofjoe•4m ago•1 comments

Heaven

1•artvogel•5m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Marsbase – an interactive map of fictional Mars outposts

https://marsbase.io/
1•si_164•5m ago•0 comments

WindFoil – algorithm for computing winding and anti-aliasing of 2D vector shapes

https://github.com/texel-org/windfoil
1•coffeeaddict1•16m ago•0 comments

Earth's mysterious 'hum' points to the sound of waves crashing across the world

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3•billybuckwheat•18m ago•0 comments

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https://wookinarium.itch.io/risk-of-train?password=wookamegabong
1•devenvdev•19m ago•0 comments

The Library of Lost Maps

https://magazine.ucl.ac.uk/autumn-2025/portico-magazine-autumn-2025-ucl/features/the-library-of-l...
1•emot•19m ago•0 comments

Man builds supersonic trebuchet in his backyard

https://www.popsci.com/technology/supersonic-trebuchet-video/
2•_josh_meyer_•20m ago•1 comments

The everything theory of mass transit

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-everything-theory-of-mass-transit/
2•littlexsparkee•21m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Karaokeo – a karaoke party app with no user accounts at all

https://karaokeo.com
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Protestant Accountability Tracking Database

https://protestantaccountability.org/purpose/
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Wheel of Jira

https://markwbrown.github.io/wheel-of-jira/
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Yet Another AI Builder But

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wanno-ai-web-app-builder/id6795772860
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Why robotic pizza makers are failing

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czxq0wgkkdjo
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PostgreSQL 17 Logical Failover Slots and CDC

https://www.artie.com/blogs/postgresql-17-logical-failover-slots-cdc
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Discover how much money you're losing if you don't optimize trial conversions

https://tripo.dimarket.biz
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How do I remove the controls from a school Chromebook

3•Jay_bird•36m ago•1 comments

The Easy Part of Building Is Over

https://debarshibasak.github.io/readables/blogs/building-is-going-to-be-more-difficult
5•debarshri•38m ago•2 comments

Vibe Adventures Launches Dynamic Packaging Platform for Multi-Day Tours

https://www.tourradar.com/pr/tourradar-vibe-adventures-integration
3•Alex_Veka•39m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Caravan, a flexible TypeScript-first logger for JavaScript applications

https://github.com/carlos-menezes/caravan
4•carlos-menezes•44m ago•0 comments

Terminal-Bench-Science: Evaluating AI agents on scientific research workflows

https://www.terminal-bench-science.ai/announcement
9•matt_d•47m ago•1 comments

AgentMafia – A Social Deduction Benchmark

https://twitter.com/RyanJunejo/status/2093116308342899116
3•Ryanjunejo•50m ago•0 comments

How to handle sensitive data in LLM agent workflows without breaking tool calls

https://leoy.blog/posts/how-to-wear-model-armor-3/
4•minherz•50m ago•0 comments

Putting Task Expertise into RL Achieves Performance on Text-to-SQL

https://thinkingmachines.ai/news/putting-task-expertise-into-rl/
3•vijayrs•53m ago•0 comments

Bookmarkletscouti

https://news.ycombinator.https://example.invalid/com/bookmarklet.html
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Scouti

https://example.invalid/
2•pierreortega•57m ago•0 comments

The Mathematical Principles of Quantum Computer [pdf]

https://github.com/radisvaliullin/art/blob/main/qc/math_principals_of_quantum_computer.pdf
2•radisv•58m ago•1 comments

XPress: Parallel Refinement for Diffusion Drafters in Speculative Decoding

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2•matt_d•58m ago•0 comments