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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.

Postcards Connecting the World – Postcrossing

https://www.postcrossing.com/
1•Tomte•51s ago•0 comments

New digital hall passes track bathroom breaks, gather data in NYC schools

https://gothamist.com/news/new-digital-hall-passes-track-bathroom-breaks-gather-data-in-nyc-schools
1•gnabgib•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Mrg – Clean miscellaneous files created by macOS

https://github.com/ilotoki0804/mrg
1•ilotoki0804•5m ago•0 comments

Review into mental health conditions, ADHD and autism: interim report

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-review-into-mental-health-conditions-adhd-...
1•irickt•6m ago•1 comments

New microwave frying technique could make French fries much healthier

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/04/260402042803.htm
2•AdmiralAsshat•6m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Run Claude Code autonomously inside your Docker Compose stack (OSS)

https://github.com/sayil/dangerously
1•sayil•6m ago•0 comments

DiscoDB – Relational database stored 100% in a Discord guild

https://github.com/lasect/discodb
1•jedeusus•7m ago•0 comments

Staff SWE and Staff DS Roles at Pomelo Care

https://www.pomelocare.com/
1•liaskevofilax•9m ago•0 comments

We Built a Language for AI Pipelines

https://2389.ai/posts/why-we-built-a-language-for-ai-pipelines/
1•harper•10m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Large scale hallucinated citation problem in published literature

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00969-z
1•cyclecycle•10m ago•0 comments

Tcpdump Is the Network Debugging Tool You Should Have Learned Years Ago

https://keninkujovic.com/blog/tcpdump
2•speckx•10m ago•0 comments

Web 0.1 (2006)

https://thedailywtf.com/articles/web_0_0x2e_1
1•LorenDB•12m ago•0 comments

Stolen KitKat Tracker

https://nestlecorporate.qualifioapp.com/quiz/1776864_2455/CDCG-KITKAT-STOLEN-FORM.html
2•haunter•13m ago•0 comments

Rio Terminal v0.3.0 Released

https://github.com/raphamorim/rio/releases/tag/v0.3.0
1•bobdylanswe•19m ago•0 comments

I saved a doomed Windows laptop by embracing Linux

https://www.theverge.com/tech/905946/windows-11-forced-obsolescence-linux-thinkpad
4•mariuz•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Arxitect – Agentic Plugin for Architecture and Design Patterns

https://github.com/andonimichael/arxitect
2•iamandoni•22m ago•0 comments

Colorado's New Speed Camera System Makes Waze Nearly Useless

https://www.motor1.com/news/792050/colorado-automated-speed-limit-cameras/
5•c420•22m ago•1 comments

War crimes are no longer shameful. That should terrify you

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/4/3/war-crimes-are-no-longer-shameful-that-should-terrify...
26•akyuu•24m ago•4 comments

Chip-scale optical wireless system hits 362 Gbps at half the energy of Wi-Fi

https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/advanced-photonics-nexus/volume-5/issue-02/026018/Chi...
4•prabal97•25m ago•0 comments

Bid to name a street in San Francisco

https://paintastreet.com/auction
1•akalin•26m ago•0 comments

Breaking Down the Cerebras Wafer Scale Engine

https://wafer.substack.com/p/breaking-down-the-cerebras-wafer
1•matt_d•27m ago•0 comments

Why Artemis 2 is going to the moon – and what NASA hopes to find

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04/02/nasa-hopes-secret-to-life-on-earth-on-dark-side-of-moon/
1•Stratoscope•28m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Simple Audio Sweeper

https://github.com/PJDude/sas
1•pjdude•28m ago•0 comments

Artemis II crew take 'spectacular' image of Earth

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8jzr423p9o
2•andsoitis•29m ago•0 comments

JSONata Comes to ColdFusion: Query and Transform JSON Like a Pro

https://www.mycfml.com/articles/jsonata-comes-to-coldfusion-query-and-transform-json-like-a-pro/
1•rmason•32m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A memory layer for AI agents that organizes itself

2•srisanth_temprl•32m ago•0 comments

Fun with CSF firmware RK3588 GPU firmware

https://thepixelspulse.com/posts/fun-with-csf-firmware-rk3588-gpu-firmware/
3•mfilion•33m ago•0 comments

The need for better compiler frontend benchmarks: Carbon's benchmarking approach

https://discourse.llvm.org/t/the-need-for-better-frontend-benchmarks/90257
1•matt_d•34m ago•0 comments

Do All Languages Cost the Same? Tokenization in the Era of Commercial LLMs

https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.13707
1•Anon84•35m ago•0 comments

Metal Gear Solid V – Graphics Study

https://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2017/12/15/mgs-v-graphics-study/
4•aggrrrh•36m ago•0 comments