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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•12mo 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•12mo 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•12mo 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•12mo 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•12mo 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.

OWASP PTK 9.9.0 / 9.9.1 is out

1•DenisPodgurskii•5m ago•0 comments

Show HN: RSME:A Reactive Stability Mutation Encryption

https://zenodo.org/records/19712564
1•RanggaS•6m ago•0 comments

A Comparative Security Analysis of Three Cloud-Based Password Managers

https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/058
1•agadius•7m ago•0 comments

Prompt Guidance – GPT-5.5

https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/guides/prompt-guidance
1•amunozo•7m ago•0 comments

RNet: Users pay for their own AI usage instead of apps covering token costs

1•rNetAi•8m ago•0 comments

A Gopher Meets a Crab

https://miren.dev/blog/gopher-meets-crab
1•radimm•16m ago•0 comments

Scott Aaronson on quantum: "Will you heed my warnings NOW?"

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9718
2•bwesterb•17m ago•0 comments

I took an algorithm to court in Sweden. The algorithm won

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/30/i-took-an-algorithm-to-court-in-sweden-the-...
2•nickcotter•17m ago•0 comments

How does your team handle cloud cost optimisation?

https://www.kloudaudit.eu/
1•leumasj•18m ago•0 comments

The Czech Prime Minister just reacted to our video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzDuj42HJ1o
1•dataflow•18m ago•0 comments

Siddharth on X: "Software Is Eating the World (But This Time)"

https://twitter.com/siddharthvader_/status/2049161016156762441
1•kiyanwang•21m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Recommended Gemini CLI extensions/skills for token consumption

1•elC0mpa•22m ago•0 comments

We never get to what matters

https://yewjin.substack.com/p/why-we-never-get-to-what-matters
1•kiyanwang•26m ago•0 comments

AI Coding Tools Ranked by Community Sentiment: 4 Weeks of Reddit/HN Data (2026)

https://murmure.cc/state-of-ai-devtools-2026
1•ianalyze•26m ago•0 comments

Why the US keeps getting richer while Britain stagnates

https://www.thetimes.com/business/economics/article/why-us-richer-than-uk-rlkshqvq9
2•petethomas•27m ago•0 comments

Hot Updates in Postgres

https://boringsql.com/posts/hot-updates/
1•radimm•27m ago•1 comments

FujiNet Go 800 – Atari800 Emulator for Android – FujiNet

https://fujinet.online/2026/04/23/fujinet-go-800-atari800-emulator-for-android/
1•rbanffy•29m ago•0 comments

Chinese firm revives the drive-in cinema with film-projecting headlights

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/technology-uk/article/chinese-firm-drive-in-cinema-film-projecting-he...
2•petethomas•30m ago•1 comments

Claude Code Opus 4.7: 16B cache reads across 8 sessions, forensic JSONL data

https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/38350
1•biniruprojects•35m ago•0 comments

Banana Pi Announces RISC-V Based BPI‑SM10 Developer Kit and K3 Pico‑ITX AI SBC

https://forum.banana-pi.org/t/banana-pi-major-release-based-on-spacemit-k3-launching-bpi-sm10-dev...
1•fork-bomber•39m ago•0 comments

Visualize Any Repository

https://gitdiagram.com
1•ahmedkhaleel•40m ago•1 comments

How AI Is Changing Programming Language Usage

https://cacm.acm.org/news/how-ai-is-changing-programming-language-usage/
2•adunk•41m ago•0 comments

Guess at lost Bitcoin, right in the browser

https://satoshiguesser.com
1•jumploops•41m ago•0 comments

One of the most common knee surgeries does not help and may be harmful

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1126327
2•u1hcw9nx•43m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I built a zero-tracking news hub to escape doom scrolling at (AGE 17y)

2•blazeeofsun•46m ago•0 comments

Meta shares slide as it hikes AI spending forecast, youth social media backlash

https://nypost.com/2026/04/29/business/meta-shares-slide-as-tech-giant-hikes-ai-spending-forecast...
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•48m ago•0 comments

Apple's self-designed AI server chip "Baltra" may be manufactured by TSMC

https://technode.com/2026/04/09/apples-self-designed-ai-server-chip-baltra-may-be-manufactured-by...
1•mgh2•49m ago•0 comments

Indie English Bookstore in Tokyo

https://featherheartbooks.com/
3•agnishom•50m ago•0 comments

Meta bumped 2026 capex forecast up to $145B for AI boom investors flinched

https://fortune.com/2026/04/29/meta-zuckerberg-145-billion-ai-spending-roi/
3•1vuio0pswjnm7•51m ago•2 comments

Claude Code is inspecting repos and can auto-switch to extra usage

https://twitter.com/theo/status/2049645973350363168/photo/1
3•mlitwiniuk•53m ago•1 comments