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The Business Case for Vanilla JavaScript

https://lewiscampbell.tech/blog/250430.html
6•LAC-Tech•11mo ago

Comments

copypaper•11mo 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•11mo ago
What benefits of a framework?

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

proc0•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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: Max Headbox, a local agent that fits on a Raspberry Pi 5

https://github.com/syxanash/maxheadbox
1•syx•11s ago•0 comments

Using Tracert as a full duplex chat solution

https://github.com/wdunn001/tracer-talk
1•Zombwaffle•1m ago•1 comments

A spokesperson could not be reached for comment (because she doesn't exist)

https://www.ft.com/content/05c9515a-d183-4e9f-aab9-8b3c6899ff25
1•petethomas•2m ago•0 comments

Jane Street – neural net puzzle

https://huggingface.co/spaces/jane-street/droppedaneuralnet
1•yehoshuapw•2m ago•0 comments

Try Living in Cape Town, Where 70% of Downtown Housing Is for Tourists

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/world/africa/cape-town-housing-crisis.html
1•duxup•2m ago•1 comments

Attention Is All You Have

https://thehealthcaretechnologist.substack.com/p/attention-is-all-you-have
1•brandonin•2m ago•0 comments

Alarm App That Requires Challenges to Turn Off

https://apps.apple.com/redeem/?ctx=offercodes&id=6758871228&code=WAKEUPNOW
2•cnnadozi•5m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Made a small multiplayer game with AI

https://newton.hyperkube.org/
2•SamInTheShell•6m ago•1 comments

Airupt – open-source red-teaming for LLMs (79 attack vectors)

https://github.com/airupt/airupt
2•airupt•11m ago•0 comments

Google Drive ransomware detection now on by default for paying users

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/google-drive-ransomware-detection-now-on-by-defaul...
3•Brajeshwar•12m ago•0 comments

No H100? No Problem. Why I Built ML Patron for Autonomous AI Research

https://medium.com/@nblintao/no-h100-no-problem-why-i-built-ml-patron-for-autonomous-ai-research-...
2•nblintao•12m ago•0 comments

Resetting Mutt's terminal after OAuth2

https://www.netmeister.org/blog/mutt-reset-terminal.html
2•speckx•13m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Rustunnel – An open-source tunnel alternative that charges $0 when idle

https://www.rustunnel.com/
2•joaoh82•13m ago•0 comments

Mesh – one room for your AI agents (open source)

https://github.com/ycanerden/mesh
2•canerden•14m ago•1 comments

Impressive Claude Code Features

https://glitch.land/blog/impressive-claude-code-features/
2•shorden•14m ago•0 comments

Top NPM package backdoored to drop dirty RAT on dev machines

https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/31/axios_npm_backdoor_rat/
2•Bender•15m ago•0 comments

An AI Reads the Web: A Deep Dive into Claude Code's WebFetchTool

https://medium.com/@nblintao/how-an-ai-reads-the-web-a-deep-dive-into-claude-codes-webfetchtool-0...
2•nblintao•15m ago•0 comments

One in seven Americans are ready for an AI boss, but they might not trust it

https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/01/americans_ai_boss/
2•Bender•16m ago•0 comments

'People's Panel' to check if UK wants controversial Digital ID will cost £630K

https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/01/peoples_panel_digital_id/
3•Bender•17m ago•0 comments

AI surpass Superman in Competitive Programming via Agentic RL [pdf]

https://deep-reinforce.com/grandcode.pdf
2•kathyxiao•17m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Nixidy – Kubernetes GitOps with Nix and Argo CD

https://nixidy.dev/
3•granra•18m ago•0 comments

Baidu robotaxi outage in Wuhan caused by 'system failure', police say

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/baidu-robotaxi-outage-wuhan-caused-by-system-failure-p...
5•TechTechTech•18m ago•0 comments

Released: OKBrain – Embrace AI, but Own It

https://www.okbrain.org/
3•arunoda•18m ago•1 comments

/buddy in Claude Code is amazing

https://old.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1s9egh1/buddy_in_claude_code_is_amazing_but_please_dont/
2•empressplay•19m ago•0 comments

BetterDB – open-source Redis/Valkey migration across clouds and self-hosted

3•kaliades•19m ago•0 comments

The Blue Hearts Protocol: A portable memory file that makes your AI remember you

https://www.bluehearts.ai/
1•AshamedBadger56•19m ago•0 comments

Csp-toolkit – Python library to parse, analyze, and find bypasses in CSP headers

https://chs.us/2026/03/csp-toolkit/
2•bitscraper•20m ago•0 comments

Can you get rich off strangers? This website finds out live

https://canyougetrichoffstrangers.com/
1•timothybendt•20m ago•0 comments

Why Swedish Schools Are Bringing Back Books

https://undark.org/2026/04/01/sweden-schools-books/
1•speckx•20m ago•0 comments

Kubernetes Start Rewrite in Rust

https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/138147
2•SchwKatze•20m ago•1 comments