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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•1y 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•1y 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•1y 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•1y 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•1y 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.

Financing of historic AI buildout raises systemic risks in US, researcher says

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/financing-historic-ai-buildout-raises-systemic-risks-us-...
1•defrost•1m ago•0 comments

I Made a Flashcards App

https://learnet.app/
1•decompile1•2m ago•0 comments

Little Sally's Carnival

https://soniakayperkinsofficial.substack.com/p/little-sallys-carnival
1•kayperkins45•3m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Ghostfox – Self-hosted stealth browser for AI agents

https://github.com/autokeren/ghostfox
1•ajat82•5m ago•0 comments

Jevlint: Fuzzy Linter

https://jevlint.dev/
1•handfuloflight•6m ago•0 comments

Show HN: ParkourNote – A research workspace, built solo in a month with Claude

https://note.parkourlabs.io/
1•sushiwang•19m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Help us fire our UI/UX designers

https://vosu.ai
1•nafisfaysal•22m ago•1 comments

MiniMax M3.1-Flash-Preview

https://twitter.com/MiniMaxAgent/status/2104079819881517400
1•shenli3514•22m ago•0 comments

Alibaba Cloud Joins as a Founding Corporate Patron with $3M

https://omarchy.org/news/2026/09/alibaba-cloud-joins-as-founding-corporate-patron/
3•felixfurtak•22m ago•1 comments

Opening Up New Possibilities for "Blue" in Roses: New Findings on Copigmentation

https://www.suntory.com/sic/story/20260911
1•crescit_eundo•24m ago•0 comments

Cambrian Explosion of AI

https://debarshibasak.github.io/readables/blogs/cambrian-explosion
2•debarshri•25m ago•1 comments

OllamaMQ v0.5.0 – supports SystemOne APIs

1•chleba•34m ago•0 comments

The Truth Physics Can No Longer Ignore

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2025/12/physics-life-reductionism-complexity/685257/
2•jdkee•34m ago•1 comments

How do I promote an anti AI slop tool I built? It's free and genuine

1•arpanghoshal•43m ago•2 comments

Turning My PS3 into a Moonlight Streaming Host, and Building with LLMs

https://kenmyers.io/posts/ps3-moonlight
2•bruhfeefee•45m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Novrl, clickable product demos from screenshots, no account needed

https://novrl.com/
1•dylan_builds•49m ago•0 comments

Thorsten Ball – What I believe about the future of software development

https://thorstenball.com/blog/2026/09/19/what-i-believe-about-the-future-of-software-development/
5•Helithumper•50m ago•2 comments

Is Life Itself a State of Matter?

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/is-life-itself-a-state-of-matter/
3•pseudolus•51m ago•0 comments

Trust No Bot

https://trustnobot.com
2•kevinmannix•54m ago•1 comments

Is open source contribution still relevant?

1•cipherdc•55m ago•2 comments

How to Know When the AI Boom Is About to Go Bust

https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/how-to-know-when-the-ai-boom-is-about-to-go-bust-61af3d26
3•1vuio0pswjnm7•56m ago•0 comments

Show HN: DeepFace is now running on PyTorch alongside TensorFlow

https://github.com/serengil/deepface
1•serengil•56m ago•0 comments

How a Zig IDE Could Work

https://matklad.github.io/2023/02/10/how-a-zig-ide-could-work.html
1•birdculture•59m ago•0 comments

European industry is doing better than you may think

https://www.economist.com/business/2026/09/27/european-industry-is-doing-better-than-you-may-think
2•andsoitis•1h ago•0 comments

San Francisco Bay Area faces potential death spiral of transit system

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/26/san-francisco-bay-area-public-transportation-bart
1•andsoitis•1h ago•1 comments

Thread-identity switcheroo for io_uring

https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1094303/bf025f98cb71f941/
2•chmaynard•1h ago•0 comments

Windows Developer Config

https://github.com/microsoft/WindowsDeveloperConfig
1•wontoncc•1h ago•0 comments

Flux 3 Action: A 7B open-weight world action model for robots

https://huggingface.co/blog/black-forest-labs/flux-3-action
4•fourfire•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: DynamicNotch – An interactive, customizable notch utility for macOS

https://github.com/Hitjack007/DynamicNotch
2•Hitjack007•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Agenttab – Status Icons for Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode Tabs

https://github.com/marciob/agenttab
1•marciob•1h ago•0 comments