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The Business Case for Vanilla JavaScript

https://lewiscampbell.tech/blog/250430.html
6•LAC-Tech•10mo ago

Comments

copypaper•10mo 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•10mo ago
What benefits of a framework?

I think that's why I wrote this - I almost completely fail to see them.

proc0•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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.

Show HN: I replaced my morning GA4 tab explosion with one page

https://plask.dev
1•tskulbru•33s ago•0 comments

Show HN: TryMyClaw – Managed OpenClaw hosting with full SSH and root access

https://trymyclaw.com/
1•howardV•55s ago•0 comments

MacBook Neo

https://daringfireball.net/2026/03/the_macbook_neo
1•etothet•1m ago•1 comments

Faultless Systems: Yes, We Can

https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/entities/publication/3ac930d4-0554-421d-b46d-caa7fed7d635
1•rramadass•3m ago•0 comments

FlowEasy – CI/CD with auto-heal AI, MCP server, and built-in DevSecOps

https://floweasy.dev
1•michaelmoreira•5m ago•0 comments

Amazon is determined to use AI for everything – even when it slows down work

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2026/mar/11/amazon-artificial-intelligence
1•n1b0m•6m ago•0 comments

Bypassing LLM Guardrails via Context Window Saturation

https://substack.com/sign-in
1•rhsxandros•9m ago•1 comments

Infrastructure Vulnerabilities and White-Label Abuse: Is Opnex a Scam?

1•cappyfjao•9m ago•1 comments

Gloop – a self-modifying agent CLI and minimal agent SDK

https://gloop.codes
2•thecupisblue•13m ago•0 comments

Apple MacBook Neo review: Can a Mac get by with an iPhone's processor inside?

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/apple-macbook-neo-review-can-a-mac-get-by-with-an-iphones...
1•mritzmann•13m ago•0 comments

Imagine Losing Your Job to the Mere Possibility of AI

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/03/ai-layoffs-block-jack-dorsey/686304/
1•FinnLobsien•14m ago•0 comments

Turning my website into an MCP tool for AI agents

https://ricmac.org/2026/03/11/webmcp-ai-agents-interact-website/
1•ricmac•16m ago•1 comments

China Restricts OpenClaw as Security Fears Grow

https://operator.io/blog/china-restricts-openclaw
3•david_shi•17m ago•0 comments

The Plot Against Intelligence, Human and Artificial

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-plot-against-intelligence-human
1•rbanffy•17m ago•0 comments

Has quantum advantage been achieved?

https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.09901
2•in_a_hole•18m ago•1 comments

Jumping VPN: session-centric architecture – multipath and failover demos

https://github.com/Endless33/jumping-vpn-preview
1•JumpingVPN2027•18m ago•1 comments

Linkedrecords – A fresh take on Backend as a Service (Supabase alternative)

https://linkedrecords.com/getting-started/
1•WolfOliver•19m ago•0 comments

Scientists Discover Way to Reverse Chemical Process Linked with Alzheimer's

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-discover-way-to-reverse-chemical-process-linked-with-alzheime...
1•donohoe•20m ago•0 comments

After my account was hacked, I created CSDM, a tripwire to reveal the attacker

https://github.com/HSkribe/CSDM
2•HSkribe•21m ago•1 comments

Gary Kildall, Bill Gates and the "Gentleman's Agreement"

https://nemanjatrifunovic.substack.com/p/gary-kildall-bill-gates-and-the-gentlemans
2•whobre•22m ago•0 comments

GDL: Grep-native data language for agentic systems

https://github.com/greppable/spec
1•handfuloflight•23m ago•0 comments

Ardent

https://tryardent.com/
2•handfuloflight•24m ago•0 comments

The grep-native language for agentic systems

https://greppable.ai/
3•mercat•25m ago•0 comments

Genetic factors drive the link between cognitive ability,socioeconomic status

https://www.psypost.org/genetic-factors-drive-the-link-between-cognitive-ability-and-socioeconomi...
1•myth_drannon•26m ago•0 comments

Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC) is an open protocol to connect wallets to apps

https://nwc.dev/
1•janandonly•26m ago•0 comments

AI spurring expansion of high-voltage lines. Landowners, locals fighting back

https://apnews.com/article/ai-trump-energy-transmission-lines-f1c6b1251054d2a7e193297e4111b8d1
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•28m ago•0 comments

Morse code converter CLI tool written in Rust

https://github.com/zsphinxyz/zmorse-cli
1•zsphinx•28m ago•0 comments

Beating App Store review: lessons from shipping a minimal indie game

https://blog.kulman.sk/beating-app-store-review/
1•ig0r0•29m ago•0 comments

How to Create a WSL2 Ubuntu Full Desktop Environment

https://github.com/1ch4k/WSL2-Ubuntu-GUI-XRDP
1•1ch4k•31m ago•0 comments

I built a Chrome extension that syncs your life with your menstrual cycle

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/cyclesync/egmjjdfhnnbkloiijjehpkjgfeghifeb
1•Ogbon•31m ago•1 comments