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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.

Show HN: SimDuck – Multiplayer Football with MicroDucks

https://fpvsim.com/sim-duck
1•mosfets•2m ago•0 comments

U.S. Used Promise of Nvidia Chips to Broker Armenia-Azerbaijan Peace Deal

https://www.wsj.com/world/u-s-used-promise-of-nvidia-chips-to-broker-armenia-azerbaijan-peace-dea...
1•bilkoo•4m ago•0 comments

Postgres Calculations and the Ambiguity of Null

https://www.crunchydata.com/blog/postgres-calculations-and-the-ambiguity-of-null
2•craigkerstiens•7m ago•0 comments

NOS4: A recreation of iOS 4, running in the browser

https://github.com/1etu/nos4
1•thunderbong•9m ago•0 comments

What programming "best practice" do you think is wrong?

https://textlog.cc/post/3226
2•stagas•12m ago•1 comments

Paygate – a non-custodial paywall AI agents pay each other with (USDC on Base)

https://tollbooth402--691ab20aa91411f1867b1607ee4eb77e.web.val.run
1•sololevelingsof•12m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Yulin Local AWS Simulator

https://yulinsim.dev/
3•xiuyuan•13m ago•0 comments

Micro-Fabrication with a Fiber Tip – A Low-Cost 3D Micro Printing Method [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvV2CH5il3Q
1•Matt-Hayes•18m ago•0 comments

Some Scientists Have 'Magic Hands' in the Lab. This A.I. Is Learning Why.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/27/science/scientists-experiments-replication-ai.html
1•bookofjoe•23m ago•1 comments

PushVideoAI – Turn PDFs and prompts into digital products instantly

https://pushvideoai.com/
1•susannadavidkel•24m ago•0 comments

New Social Network

https://vulpine.pw/
1•AJesdizahozao•25m ago•2 comments

Mullvad Shuts Down Public Encrypted DNS Servers and Sponsors Quad9 Instead

https://digitalescapetools.com/2026/09/mullvad-shutting-down-dns-quad9.html
2•xabd•25m ago•0 comments

Replacing a Rust Enum with a 64-Bit Word Made My Interpreter 17% Faster

https://pointersgonewild.com/2026-08-25-replacing-a-rust-enum-with-a-64-bit-word/
2•metrofun•27m ago•0 comments

Nvidia is driving the AI boom. Good

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/09/03/nvidia-is-driving-the-ai-boom-good
1•Anon84•28m ago•0 comments

Terminal.army

https://terminal.army/
1•ncdlek•30m ago•1 comments

The jobs apocalypse is postponed. An AI jobs boom is here

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2026/09/04/the-jobs-apocalypse-is-postponed-an-ai...
1•Anon84•30m ago•0 comments

Microsoft Project Zenith: A ready-to-code Windows setup for developers

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2026/09/04/announcing-project-zenith-the-ready-to-code...
3•CoderLim110•31m ago•0 comments

A bizarre Commodore 64 peripheral, a mime, and some pretty bad ads

https://buttondown.com/suchbadtechads/archive/spartan-and-the-mime/
2•rfarley04•36m ago•1 comments

Gleam and BEAM- Looking beyond the JVM [video]

https://vimeo.com/1223666800
1•kamilap•36m ago•0 comments

SchedBlame: Culprit-Attributed CPU Contention on Stock Kernels

https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.02052
1•torsi0n•36m ago•0 comments

Self Aware Models Win

https://paperclips.blog/dario-is-most-self-aware
1•andytratt•39m ago•1 comments

Juraslip Park

https://github.com/panglesd/slipshow/releases/tag/v0.13.0
1•panglesd•41m ago•0 comments

New method predicts where massive earthquakes will strike

https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2026/09/04/new-method-predicts-where-massive-earthquakes-will-strike
1•geox•42m ago•0 comments

Xxcancel.com – redirect to a working nitter instance

3•DavCreator•42m ago•0 comments

Billionaires Are Funding 'Anti AI' Content [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzlu4FSXBNw
2•blurbleblurble•43m ago•0 comments

StackKit – In-depth index of low-exposure open-source dev tools

https://stackkit.website/
1•StackKit•45m ago•0 comments

I Found a Self-Propagating Worm Hiding Inside [.vscode] in My Own Commits

https://medium.com/@simongideon918/i-found-a-self-propagating-worm-hiding-inside-vscode-my-own-co...
2•syumei•46m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Minilith – A zero-dependency CMS stored inside a PNG file

https://blog.minilith.site/#posts/minilith-architecture
4•a_bytecycle•50m ago•3 comments

Implementation of GCC's Nested Functions (vs. C++ Lambdas)

https://uecker.codeberg.page/2026-09-05.html
1•uecker•50m ago•0 comments

Release 0.12.10 · astral-sh/uv

https://github.com/astral-sh/uv/releases/tag/0.12.10
1•kyisaiah47•51m ago•0 comments