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The Business Case for Vanilla JavaScript

https://lewiscampbell.tech/blog/250430.html
6•LAC-Tech•7mo ago

Comments

copypaper•7mo 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•7mo ago
What benefits of a framework?

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

proc0•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo 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.

Iranian MPs decry lack of observance of female dress code

https://www.newarab.com/news/iranian-mps-decry-lack-observance-female-dress-code
2•mhb•2m ago•1 comments

Francis Ford Coppola, Who Says He's 'Broke,' Is Selling a $1M Watch

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/fashion/francis-ford-coppola-watch-auction.html
1•handfuloflight•5m ago•0 comments

We Are Living in a Bifurcated Economy

https://amitsdeepdives.substack.com/p/we-are-living-in-a-bifurcated-economy
1•mhb•7m ago•0 comments

AI Needs to Feel Pain [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKf6Kl5TMc0
1•xqcgrek2•11m ago•0 comments

Heiliger Dankgesang: Reflections on Claude Opus 4.5

https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/heiliger-dankgesang
1•maxutility•12m ago•0 comments

MarathonOS: A spiritual successor to BlackBerry10 using Qt6 and PostmarketOS

https://marathonos.xyz/
1•pat64•15m ago•0 comments

What's changing for under 16s and parents on YouTube in Australia

https://blog.google/intl/en-au/products/whats-changing-on-youtube-in-australia/
1•decimalenough•17m ago•0 comments

Anthropic Could Go Public in 2026

https://www.ft.com/content/3254fa30-5bdb-4c30-8560-7cd7ebbefc5f
2•ls612•24m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Dependency-aware context management for LLM coding workflows

https://github.com/Mohamedsaleh14/ContextGit
1•saleh_•26m ago•0 comments

Original footage of young Putin singing "Santa Maria" by Roland Kaiser [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMA0KHNeLwQ
1•bastischmidt•27m ago•0 comments

Adopt all your ubiquity unifi devices in one shot

https://github.com/jasonroland/auto-unifi-adopt-rust-1SYSTEMSinstallation
3•teachmetolearn•28m ago•1 comments

Big Tech's 'Spend Little, Earn Lots' Formula Is Threatened by AI

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-02/big-tech-s-spend-little-earn-lots-formula-is-t...
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•28m ago•0 comments

Nuke Snake, the classic Mac shareware game

https://nukesnake.com/
2•gaws•29m ago•0 comments

SF's Claude Passed Away

https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/albino-alligator-claude-passes/
2•wferrell•35m ago•2 comments

TikTok and LinkedIn Face Investigations by Irish Media Regulator

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-02/tiktok-and-linkedin-face-investigations-by-iri...
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•36m ago•0 comments

Non-Lexical Bindings

https://www.sheeeeeeeep.art/lang-things-current-object.html
1•panic•37m ago•0 comments

Can we build WeChat-like Mini Apps using open web standards?

https://dmathewwws.com/antler-an-irl-browser
1•brazukadev•39m ago•0 comments

The Missing Piece in Digital Workflows – DevLog 0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFbj-P0D1AQ
1•ch3coohlink•41m ago•0 comments

Rand Paul: My Proposal Will Improve Health Care and Lower Costs

https://www.newsweek.com/rand-paul-my-proposal-will-improve-health-care-and-lower-costs-opinion-1...
2•bilsbie•42m ago•0 comments

Mechanisms as Types

https://spacechimplives.substack.com/p/mechanisms-as-types
1•azhenley•47m ago•0 comments

Our Founders Would Abhor What the USPTO Is Doing with the Patent System

https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/02/our-founders-would-abhor-what-the-uspto-is-doing-with-the-pat...
1•hn_acker•47m ago•0 comments

Trump pardons Honduran ex-president who was convicted of drug crimes

https://www.npr.org/2025/12/02/nx-s1-5628382/trump-pardons-honduran-ex-president-juan-orlando-her...
7•CXSHNGCB•53m ago•0 comments

Is this code clean? A critical look at Clean Code 2nd Edition

https://bugzmanov.github.io/cleancode-critique/clean_code_second_edition_review.html
3•birdculture•56m ago•0 comments

The Man I Want to Meet the Most: The Life of Alfred Lee Loomis

https://chillphysicsenjoyer.substack.com/p/the-man-i-want-to-meet-the-most
1•crescit_eundo•58m ago•0 comments

Eev: Emacs Execute Verbosely

https://anggtwu.net/index.html#eev
1•oumua_don17•59m ago•0 comments

Designing the Dreidel of the Future

https://www.jellomenorah.com/p/designing-the-dreidel-of-the-future
1•akkartik•59m ago•0 comments

Show HN: FT-Lab – Lightweight TinyLlama Fine-Tuning (Full FT / LoRA / QLoRA)

https://github.com/REICHIYAN/ft_lab
1•Sai-HN•1h ago•0 comments

Everything that is wrong in museums starts with wall labels

https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2025/11/20/cafeteria/#usf
1•panic•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: AI slides and presentation coaching

https://eloquentiq.vercel.app
1•mdev23•1h ago•0 comments

A pragmatic guide to LLM evals for devs

https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/evals
3•sren•1h ago•0 comments