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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.

Mathematics at Berkely: A History (2008) [pdf]

https://math.berkeley.edu/~kirby/papers/Kirby%20-%20Review%20of%20%22Mathematics%20at%20Berkeley%...
1•jruohonen•1m ago•0 comments

Next.js Across Platforms: Adapters, OpenNext, and Our Commitments

https://nextjs.org/blog/nextjs-across-platforms
1•f-serif•1m ago•0 comments

European Commission's Data Stolen in Hack on AWS Account

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-27/european-commission-s-data-stolen-in-hack-on-a...
1•Betelbuddy•2m ago•1 comments

Vibecoding My Own TurboTax

https://www.telos.news/p/learning-to-code
1•gaws•2m ago•0 comments

How can engineering leaders assess their AI maturity?

https://rdel.substack.com/p/rdel-136-how-can-engineering-leaders
1•lizziechka•3m ago•0 comments

Aldus PageMaker on the Apple Macintosh

https://stonetools.ghost.io/pagemaker-mac/
1•caminanteblanco•4m ago•0 comments

Make macOS consistently bad (unironically)

https://lr0.org/blog/p/macos/
2•speckx•4m ago•0 comments

Namespace: We've raised $23M to build the compute layer for code

https://namespace.so/blog/series-a
1•pestkranker•5m ago•0 comments

Equip-1 digital video recorder for DV cameras with FireWire

https://equip-1.c-e.group
1•geerlingguy•5m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Physical input for Claude Code – slap to submit

https://slapclaude.com
1•5heri•5m ago•0 comments

Earth Live Data

https://www.earthlivedata.com/earth
1•ahalbert4•5m ago•0 comments

History About Developing of Warajevo

https://worldofspectrum.net/warajevo/Story.html
1•doruk101•6m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Installing OpenBSD on any VPS via ipxe (128mb RAM, 1GB Disk)

https://lowendspirit.com/discussion/10697/installing-openbsd-on-a-kvm-vps-via-ipxe-vnc-console-no...
1•backtogeek•6m ago•0 comments

Hummingbird: Venture Firm You've Never Heard Of

https://www.generalist.com/p/hummingbird
2•highfrequency•7m ago•0 comments

Spanish woman who died through euthanasia failed by state, say critics

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g8w4xp97jo
1•tartoran•7m ago•0 comments

Aura: OSS Agent harness for production AI (Apache 2.0)

https://platformengineering.org/blog/aura-building-open-agentic-harness-for-production-AI
2•aura-by-mezmo•8m ago•0 comments

AI agents choose tools (and why simpler APIs win)

https://improbabilityvc.substack.com/p/growth-in-the-age-of-agents
3•lshukla•11m ago•0 comments

Tribe v2: An AI Model of the Human Brain Predicting Neural Responses

https://aidemos.atmeta.com/tribev2/
1•wslh•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Anvil – Desktop App for Spec Driven Development

https://github.com/zdenham/anvil
1•zdenham•11m ago•0 comments

The lives of country code domains (2007)

https://www.icann.org/en/blogs/details/the-lives-of-country-code-domains-19-9-2007-en
1•slipfold•12m ago•0 comments

Capability-Based Security for Redox: Namespace and CWD as Capabilities

https://www.redox-os.org/news/nlnet-cap-nsmgr-cwd/
1•ejplatzer•13m ago•0 comments

Directory of all Canon EOS SLR / DSLR cameras and their exact AF systems

https://exclusivearchitecture.com/03-technical-articles-AFSE-D-list-of-cameras.html
1•ExAr•13m ago•0 comments

The Speed of China's Scientific Rise

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/03/china-science-superpower/686564/
2•JumpCrisscross•15m ago•0 comments

Did John Nash Have Schizophrenia?

https://michaelhalassa.substack.com/p/did-john-nash-really-have-schizophrenia
1•paulpauper•16m ago•0 comments

The Apple Charging Situation

https://randsinrepose.com/guides/apple-charging-guide.html
3•lemoncucumber•16m ago•0 comments

The Experience of Work in Early Modern England

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n06/tom-johnson/save-my-beer
1•mitchbob•17m ago•1 comments

China detains Panama-flagged ships after cancellation of canal concession

https://www.semafor.com/article/03/27/2026/china-detains-panama-flagged-ships
1•ilamont•21m ago•0 comments

How Can America Be So Miserable When It's So Rich?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/opinion/economy-attitudes-republicans-democrats.html
2•paulpauper•22m ago•0 comments

"All files are numbers"

https://owl.billpg.com/all-files-are-numbers/
2•speckx•22m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Is consumer AI boxes a viable idea?

2•spprashant•22m ago•0 comments