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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.

Why meaningful days look like nothing while you are living them

https://pilgrima.ge/p/the-grand-line
1•momentmaker•5m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Posse – Open-Source Web UI for Anthropic Managed Agents

https://github.com/oguzbilgic/posse
1•obilgic•8m ago•0 comments

Jury reaches no verdict on first day deliberating at Live Nation monopoly trial

https://www.boston25news.com/entertainment/jury-starts/V36MJOVVPA373JW3P5TFJZJ7OI/
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•10m ago•0 comments

Building a better crossword page for my daily cryptic hit – Whitebeard's Realm

https://whitebeard.blog/posts/building-a-better-crossword-page/
1•techbelly•11m ago•0 comments

How Ship Anchors Work [video]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/X7bWj115UwY
1•modinfo•11m ago•0 comments

Building a Z-Machine in the worst possible language – Whitebeard's Realm

https://whitebeard.blog/posts/building-a-z-machine-in-elm/
1•techbelly•11m ago•0 comments

A Mac Studio for Local AI – 6 Months Later

https://spicyneuron.substack.com/p/a-mac-studio-for-local-ai-6-months
1•try-working•16m ago•1 comments

My research has build errors now and honestly should have always worked this way

https://github.com/grainulation/wheat
2•volatilityfund•19m ago•0 comments

Beyond Quantum with Khrennikov

https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2026/04/09/beyond-quantum-with-khrennikov/
1•MrBuddyCasino•20m ago•0 comments

The Dostoevskian Moment

https://www.palladiummag.com/2026/04/11/the-dostoevskian-moment/
1•MrBuddyCasino•25m ago•0 comments

Anthropic loses appeals court bid to pause supply chain risk label

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/08/d-c-circuit-rejects-anthropic-plea-to-pause-supply-chain...
8•1vuio0pswjnm7•30m ago•1 comments

LLM Time

https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/322732.html
1•sho_hn•30m ago•0 comments

We spoke to the man making viral Lego-style AI videos for Iran

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjd8jrd1vnyo
19•breve•31m ago•5 comments

Ask HN: Former grok-code-fast-1 users, what coding model are you using now?

1•whycombinetor•34m ago•0 comments

When career anxiety becomes gameplay: lessons in China 'young-faculty simulator'

1•mmarian•37m ago•0 comments

Samsamelo – Silicon Valley selling trolley problem lies [fixed link]

https://lgwnncpcqsloqa4sqqqq5osup2rlqp7iiqliyu4y6vveu5jy6tlq.arweave.net/WazWieKElugDkoQhDrpUfqK4...
1•awbvious•40m ago•1 comments

AI Can't Read an Investor Deck

https://www.mercor.com/blog/Finance-tasks-ai-failures-modes/
1•gmays•41m ago•1 comments

Upstreaming Patches and the Cyber Resilience Act

https://www.thomas-huehn.com/upstreaming-patches-and-cra/
2•Brajeshwar•47m ago•0 comments

Entropy as a Measure of Surprise

https://nchagnet.pages.dev/blog/entropy-as-measure-of-surprise/
2•Brajeshwar•47m ago•0 comments

Americans still opt for print books over digital or audio versions

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/09/americans-still-opt-for-print-books-over-digit...
22•thm•54m ago•11 comments

The 'Enshittification' of the Internet [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCVUCdg3Uqc
2•goekjclo•56m ago•0 comments

Walked dog, did groceries, folded laundry. Claude Code shipped. Thanks Farmer

https://github.com/grainulation/farmer
4•volatilityfund•58m ago•0 comments

How a dancer with ALS used brainwaves to perform live

https://www.electronicspecifier.com/products/sensors/how-a-dancer-with-als-used-brainwaves-to-per...
3•1659447091•1h ago•0 comments

FusionCore ROS 2 sensor fusion replacing deprecated robot_localization

https://github.com/manankharwar/fusioncore
1•kharwarm•1h ago•1 comments

Agentic Engine Optimization (AEO)

https://addyosmani.com/blog/agentic-engine-optimization/
1•cdrnsf•1h ago•0 comments

The End of Eleventy

https://brennan.day/the-end-of-eleventy/
34•ValentineC•1h ago•13 comments

Used Graphify to turn incidents into a queryable knowledge graph

https://github.com/Rootly-AI-Labs/rootly-graphify-importer
2•hamzmu•1h ago•1 comments

Ze networking tool you didn't know you were looking for

https://github.com/ze-software/ze
1•ccakes•1h ago•0 comments

Metro stop is Ancient Rome's new attraction

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260408-a-150-metro-ticket-to-ancient-rome
1•1659447091•1h ago•0 comments

I propose a new programming language, CPC

2•tom_gi•1h ago•1 comments