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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.

RISC-V Vector Primer

https://github.com/simplex-micro/riscv-vector-primer/blob/main/index.md
1•oxxoxoxooo•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Invoxo – Invoicing with automatic EU VAT for cross-border services

1•InvoxoEU•1m ago•0 comments

A Tale of Two Standards, POSIX and Win32 (2005)

https://www.samba.org/samba/news/articles/low_point/tale_two_stds_os2.html
1•goranmoomin•5m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Is the Downfall of SaaS Started?

2•throwaw12•6m ago•0 comments

Flirt: The Native Backend

https://blog.buenzli.dev/flirt-native-backend/
2•senekor•8m ago•0 comments

OpenAI's Latest Platform Targets Enterprise Customers

https://aibusiness.com/agentic-ai/openai-s-latest-platform-targets-enterprise-customers
1•myk-e•11m ago•0 comments

Goldman Sachs taps Anthropic's Claude to automate accounting, compliance roles

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/06/anthropic-goldman-sachs-ai-model-accounting.html
2•myk-e•13m ago•3 comments

Ai.com bought by Crypto.com founder for $70M in biggest-ever website name deal

https://www.ft.com/content/83488628-8dfd-4060-a7b0-71b1bb012785
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•14m ago•1 comments

Big Tech's AI Push Is Costing More Than the Moon Landing

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-spending-tech-companies-compared-02b90046
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•16m ago•0 comments

The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/02/07/ai-spending-economy-shortages/
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•18m ago•0 comments

Suno, AI Music, and the Bad Future [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8dcFhF0Dlk
1•askl•20m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: How are researchers using AlphaFold in 2026?

1•jocho12•22m ago•0 comments

Running the "Reflections on Trusting Trust" Compiler

https://spawn-queue.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3786614
1•devooops•27m ago•0 comments

Watermark API – $0.01/image, 10x cheaper than Cloudinary

https://api-production-caa8.up.railway.app/docs
1•lembergs•29m ago•1 comments

Now send your marketing campaigns directly from ChatGPT

https://www.mail-o-mail.com/
1•avallark•32m ago•1 comments

Queueing Theory v2: DORA metrics, queue-of-queues, chi-alpha-beta-sigma notation

https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/queueing-theory
1•jph•44m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Hibana – choreography-first protocol safety for Rust

https://hibanaworks.dev/
5•o8vm•46m ago•1 comments

Haniri: A live autonomous world where AI agents survive or collapse

https://www.haniri.com
1•donangrey•47m ago•1 comments

GPT-5.3-Codex System Card [pdf]

https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/23eca107-a9b1-4d2c-b156-7deb4fbc697c/GPT-5-3-Codex-System-Card-02.pdf
1•tosh•1h ago•0 comments

Atlas: Manage your database schema as code

https://github.com/ariga/atlas
1•quectophoton•1h ago•0 comments

Geist Pixel

https://vercel.com/blog/introducing-geist-pixel
2•helloplanets•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: MCP to get latest dependency package and tool versions

https://github.com/MShekow/package-version-check-mcp
1•mshekow•1h ago•0 comments

The better you get at something, the harder it becomes to do

https://seekingtrust.substack.com/p/improving-at-writing-made-me-almost
2•FinnLobsien•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: WP Float – Archive WordPress blogs to free static hosting

https://wpfloat.netlify.app/
1•zizoulegrande•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: I Hacked My Family's Meal Planning with an App

https://mealjar.app
1•melvinzammit•1h ago•0 comments

Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal
2•basilikum•1h ago•0 comments

The Future of Systems

https://novlabs.ai/mission/
2•tekbog•1h ago•1 comments

NASA now allowing astronauts to bring their smartphones on space missions

https://twitter.com/NASAAdmin/status/2019259382962307393
2•gbugniot•1h ago•0 comments

Claude Code Is the Inflection Point

https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/claude-code-is-the-inflection-point
4•throwaw12•1h ago•3 comments

Show HN: MicroClaw – Agentic AI Assistant for Telegram, Built in Rust

https://github.com/microclaw/microclaw
1•everettjf•1h ago•2 comments