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The Business Case for Vanilla JavaScript

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

Comments

copypaper•6mo 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•6mo ago
What benefits of a framework?

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

proc0•6mo 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•6mo 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•6mo 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•6mo 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•6mo 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.

Choosing a vector database for ANN search at Reddit

https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditEng/comments/1ozxnjc/choosing_a_vector_database_for_ann_search_at/
1•packetslave•1m ago•0 comments

Christianity = Judaism with viral distribution, no CAC

https://twitter.com/ZoharAtkins/status/1991182238470291618
1•Philosopheril•1m ago•0 comments

New Jersey group attempted to harvest organs from patient with signs of life

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5612761-organ-donation-group-under-investigation/
1•c420•1m ago•0 comments

Robert Louis Stevenson's Art of Living (and Dying)

https://lithub.com/robert-louis-stevensons-art-of-living-and-dying/
1•Caiero•2m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Have you ever been the author of a bug? How does it feel?

1•ctxc•3m ago•0 comments

F-35, Abrams tank sales part of new US-Saudi Defense Agreement

https://breakingdefense.com/2025/11/f-35-tank-sales-part-of-new-us-saudi-strategic-defense-agreem...
1•geox•5m ago•1 comments

Wife of Astronaut Pleads Guilty to Falsely Alleging Crime in Space

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/us/space-crime-astronaut-anne-mcclain.html
1•HardwareLust•6m ago•0 comments

Perplexity Comet's MCP API Raises Structural Security Questions for AI Browsers

https://browsernative.com/perplexity-comets-mcp-api-squarex-7762/
1•twapi•6m ago•0 comments

The Death of Arduino

2•ChuckMcM•7m ago•0 comments

Kalshi Gets Labubu Derivatives in New Prediction-Market Play

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-19/want-to-bet-on-prices-for-sneakers-and-labubus...
1•7777777phil•7m ago•1 comments

Generate Statistical Q/a (Including Vis.) From Table with Provenance

https://github.com/gojiplus/statqa
1•neehao•8m ago•1 comments

The Boring Part of Bell Labs

https://elizabethvannostrand.substack.com/p/the-boring-part-of-bell-labs
1•AcesoUnderGlass•10m ago•1 comments

Google Search is now using AI to create interactive UI to answer your questions

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/artificial-intelligence/google-search-is-now-using-ai-to-cr...
1•jinxmeta•10m ago•0 comments

SpeedTest data shows Apple's N1 chip lifts the floor on iPhone WiFi performance

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/testing-shows-apple-n1-wi-fi-chip-improves-on-older-broad...
2•isaacdl•11m ago•0 comments

Apple's M1 chip gave the Mac a second life

https://www.macworld.com/article/2965948/the-m1-chip-was-introduced-five-years-ago-and-changed-ev...
1•naves•12m ago•1 comments

Adafruit on the Death of Arduino

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/adafruit_opensource-privacy-techpolicy-activity-739690336223705497...
2•ChuckMcM•13m ago•0 comments

The lost cause of the Lisp machines

https://www.tfeb.org/fragments/2025/11/18/the-lost-cause-of-the-lisp-machines/
1•enbywithunix•14m ago•0 comments

Cook's Ruler Sweep: 10k-city TSP in 17 minutes (pure Python)

https://github.com/g4mbit5/Cooks-Ruler-Sweep
1•g4mbit5•14m ago•1 comments

The Shining (1980) – Kubrick's Gold Story

https://www.collativelearning.com/the%20shining%20-%20chap%2015.html
1•kerim-ca•14m ago•0 comments

Xmpp.js 0.14.0: XMPP for JavaScript

https://github.com/xmppjs/xmpp.js/releases/tag/v0.14.0
2•neustradamus•15m ago•0 comments

2002: Last.fm and Audioscrobbler Herald the Social Web

https://cybercultural.com/p/lastfm-audioscrobbler-2002/
1•naves•15m ago•0 comments

Measuring Political Bias in Claude

https://www.anthropic.com/news/political-even-handedness
1•gmays•15m ago•0 comments

Pozsar's Bretton Woods III: Sometimes Money Can't Solve the Problem

https://philippdubach.com/2025/10/25/pozsars-bretton-woods-iii-the-framework-1/2/
2•7777777phil•19m ago•0 comments

Tokyo court orders Cloudflare to pay over $3.2M. over manga piracy sites

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20251119_16/
2•gslin•19m ago•0 comments

Do Less

https://www.sunilshenoy.com/2025/11/19/do-less.html
1•speckx•24m ago•0 comments

Talk live with the guy who whispers "sales" to founders and startups

https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1kvJpMjqzXDxE
1•riley-i•27m ago•0 comments

Metabase 57 – Document Creation

https://www.metabase.com/releases/metabase-57
1•markwillis82•27m ago•0 comments

When grades stop meaning anything

https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/when-grades-stop-meaning-anything
5•paulpauper•27m ago•1 comments

How the Hell Are Porsches So Reliable?

https://www.jalopnik.com/how-the-hell-are-porsches-so-reliable-1709270257/
2•kerim-ca•28m ago•0 comments

Elasticity and microgrooves form aligned myotubes similar to slow twitch muscles

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-12744-7
1•PaulHoule•29m ago•0 comments