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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.

Why Omarchy Exists

https://mikael.pika.page/posts/why-omarchy-exists
1•mikae1•22s ago•0 comments

The Python documentation is now available in Persian

https://blog.python.org/2026/09/the-python-documentation-is-now-available-in-persian/
1•lumpa•1m ago•0 comments

An LLM Beat NetHack

https://kenforthewin.github.io/blog/posts/llm-nethack-ascension/
1•jwm1•1m ago•0 comments

The Most Important Market in AI Is the Middle

https://tomtunguz.com/the-most-important-market-in-ai-is-the-middle/
1•simonpure•3m ago•0 comments

Cursor Introducing Projects

https://cursor.com/blog/projects
2•Leonerd•4m ago•0 comments

Immigration changes are driving foreign researchers to leave the U.S.

https://www.statnews.com/2026/05/04/trump-immigration-policy-stat-survey-measures-science-impact/
3•Bluestein•5m ago•0 comments

Are we going to use the same Desktop UX forever? [video]

https://media.ccc.de/v/kde2026-7-are_we_really_going_to_use_the_same_desktop_ux_forever
1•ognarb•5m ago•0 comments

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https://theconversation.com/how-the-pro-nicotine-wellness-movement-rebranded-an-addictive-drug-29...
1•devilcius•6m ago•0 comments

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https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/10/maga-foreign-policy/688352/
3•rbanffy•6m ago•0 comments

CP/M-80 2.2 Compilers. (Update from June 19, 2026: Dave Glover – by David Lee

https://medium.com/@davidly_33504/cp-m-80-2-2-compilers-91958a8f1d58
1•rbanffy•6m ago•0 comments

Signature 27 is likely Motorola's first smartphone with GrapheneOS support

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Signature-27-is-likely-Motorola-s-first-smartphone-with-GrapheneOS-s...
1•thunderbong•7m ago•0 comments

Ten thousand magnets later – CERN Courier

https://cerncourier.com/ten-thousand-magnets-later/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwMvW9cAIZg
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https://whatarepasskeys.info/
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Show HN: QBasic 1.1 in the Browser

https://www.vahidyousefzadeh.com/qbasic/app
1•vahidce•12m ago•0 comments

How can this Amazon scammer keep going, not shipping any goods?

https://www.amazon.de/sp?language=en&ie=UTF8&seller=A29EBN4DXM8UCL&asin=B0CGBFF8K9&ref_=dp_mercha...
10•kiloklokillo•12m ago•2 comments

The Cloudflare error page X icon is not centered

https://infosec.exchange/@rebane2001/117319966425143761
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Open Source World of Warcraft Client in C++ and Vulkan Renderer

https://github.com/Kelsidavis/WoWee
1•m0do1•13m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Free attestation for AI agent decisions – verifying one costs $0.10

https://github.com/0xsims/rubric-attest
1•RubricProtocol•14m ago•0 comments

Meta Connect 2026: Watch Live Sept 23–24

https://www.meta.com/connect/
2•simonpure•14m ago•0 comments

Jev vs. LLMs on 770 "Am I the Asshole?" posts

https://github.com/dchristopoulos/jev-aita
2•dchristopoulos•14m ago•0 comments

Human homeostasis is more efficient in social proximity

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aeg4937
2•wslh•15m ago•0 comments

WoW Mac boost – speed up WoW by holding the volume key

https://github.com/chrisdecember/wow-mac-boost/
1•nk_kolja•19m ago•0 comments

The Long Walk Out – Human Migration Atlas

https://khayoon.github.io/Peopling-of-the-Planet-Earth-Mapped/
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Geothermal Heat Map of US Hot Springs

https://www.soakingsprings.com/hot-springs/geothermal-map
4•armenarmen•20m ago•1 comments

Double Descent and Malign Overfitting in Diffusion Models

https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.26392
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KDE and AI, and You, and Me

https://pointieststick.com/2026/09/23/kde-and-ai-and-you-and-me/
2•TangerineDream•24m ago•0 comments

Security auditing in the age of (good enough) AI

https://blog.trailofbits.com/2026/09/18/auditing-in-the-age-of-good-enough-ai/
2•wslh•24m ago•0 comments

Buzz: Share spare compute and run open models together over P2P networks

https://www.iroh.computer/blog/buzz-agent-workspaces
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Prepping for an engineering interview? Created this skill you can use

https://github.com/bravilogy/interview-prep
1•bravilogy•29m ago•0 comments