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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.

MPs and Lords call for new law to address AI threat to human rights

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyzvgj70y4o
1•chrisjj•9m ago•0 comments

OpenArch – PyTorch implementations of modern LLM architectures

https://github.com/anuj0456/OpenArch
2•anuj0456•9m ago•1 comments

Tesla owners to get insurance discount if they use self-driving

https://www.afr.com/companies/transport/tesla-owners-to-get-insurance-discount-if-they-use-self-d...
1•Alien1Being•12m ago•0 comments

1.8x faster than GitHub Actions

https://ogirardot.writizzy.blog/p/rickub-1-8-faster-then-github-actions
1•ssaboum•12m ago•1 comments

Would you like to be a helpful idiot to our AI overlords? [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZB7wlYbknM
1•gilfoyle_7•17m ago•0 comments

An open-source diagram skill for designer

https://github.com/cathrynlavery/diagram-design
1•Nina_antalpha•19m ago•0 comments

Is PDF a Problem for AI?

https://pdf4wcag.com/blog-news/is-pdf-a-problem-for-ai
1•JilBill•26m ago•1 comments

Finding All Solutions to LinkedIn-Queens Puzzle

https://wyounas.github.io/model-checking/puzzles/2026/06/06/finding-all-solutions-to-linkedin-que...
1•simplegeek•29m ago•0 comments

SpaceX sues to block release of tax-break records for its Texas Terafab project

https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-terafab-tax-break-records-ai-transparency-texas-2026-9
2•snikolaev•29m ago•0 comments

Show HN: 1080p is 920px tall – 1k real browser viewports

https://screensize.net/reports/viewport-stats
3•zenpe•29m ago•0 comments

Language Makes Power Feel Like Common Sense

https://linguistically.substack.com/p/antonio-gramsci-how-language-makes
1•akbarnama•30m ago•0 comments

Australian insurer offers discount to self-driving car owners

https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/humans-make-mistakes-insurer-offers-discount-to-...
2•Alien1Being•31m ago•0 comments

Human bottleneck will not let AI replace any jobs

2•jatindavis05•33m ago•0 comments

Open-source project: Use ChatGPT Web models directly in Codex

https://github.com/miuuyy/codex-chatgpt-web
1•Moon_Y•37m ago•0 comments

Confessions of an Unrepentant Slop Snob

https://charity.wtf/p/confessions-of-an-unrepentant-slop
2•BerislavLopac•39m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Descles, response level LLM message control with HITL approval flows

https://www.descles.com/
1•chiatzen•43m ago•0 comments

If Astra was trained on 100k Blackwell GPUs, what happens with 1M Rubin?

https://twitter.com/JensenHuang/status/2096700264569090384
2•aurareturn•43m ago•1 comments

South Africa's weigh-and-pay shops are tackling 'poverty tax' head on

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/sep/14/south-africa-weigh-and-pay-shops-food-...
1•ljf•45m ago•0 comments

Three Reasons Europe learned to distrust Big Tech before America did

https://thebulletin.org/premium/2026-09/three-reasons-europe-learned-to-distrust-big-tech-before-...
1•vrganj•46m ago•0 comments

My experience of September 11, 2001, from across the Hudson

https://medium.com/freedomofthought/if-nobody-loved-me-the-city-did-27ad19dbcb8a
2•raynchad•46m ago•0 comments

Ansto nuclear reactor marks 20 years of health and technology innovation

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-14/ansto-opal-nuclear-reactor-celebrates-20-years/107132928
2•ggm•47m ago•0 comments

Teaching a fruit fly to play chess

https://flychess-hq.vercel.app
1•qsort•47m ago•0 comments

The Cost of Omelas – 10 centuries of total people killed by nation states

https://omelas-dj1.pages.dev
1•epsteingpt•56m ago•1 comments

War over robotaxis in NYC heats up with retracted Waymo report, 'Autokill' novel

https://gothamist.com/news/war-over-robotaxis-in-nyc-heats-up-after-retracted-waymo-report-and-au...
2•tape_measure•57m ago•0 comments

What an ERC-4626 price test shows

https://medium.com/@giladha/what-an-erc-4626-price-test-actually-shows-9fce352c5bde
1•giladha•57m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I made an unlimited TikTok video generator to get views on the internet

https://cloney.app
1•phanahm•58m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Why are HDMI connectors hard to reach in 2026?

1•final_moss•59m ago•1 comments

No cities on the Moon – there isn't enough water, scientists say

https://www.frontiersin.org/news/2026/09/14/no-cities-on-the-moon-there-isnt-enough-water-frontie...
4•geox•1h ago•0 comments

Another Slice of Swiss Cheese for Untrusted Monitoring

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zJWgfsad8o9Y8E9sb/another-slice-of-swiss-cheese-for-untrusted-mon...
2•joozio•1h ago•0 comments

Every tool you need, right in the browser

https://footrue.com/
2•rajeshrajappan•1h ago•0 comments