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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.

Teaching AI to Reason About Software

https://soteria-tools.com/blog/teaching-ai
1•giltho•1m ago•0 comments

KDE Linux Introduces "Developer Mode" Option, Easier Log Collection

https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-Linux-June-2026
1•Bender•3m ago•0 comments

'It's like having a dumb friend': Young San Franciscans hate AI

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/san-francisco-ai-backlash-22325141.php
1•turtlegrids•4m ago•0 comments

US opts not to renew Trump's trade deal with Mexico and Canada

https://www.ft.com/content/2c7b4dc8-1b1c-49f4-b51a-0dee0c1d216a
1•petethomas•5m ago•0 comments

Roost

https://roostsocial.app/
1•JetSpiegel•5m ago•0 comments

Reap: Automatic Curation of Coding Agent Benchmarks

https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.01527
1•dipankarsarkar•8m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Could someone invite me to lobste.rs?

1•ra0x3•8m ago•0 comments

The Rape Gang Inquiry Report

https://rapeganginquiry.co.uk/report
2•Bender•8m ago•1 comments

Are Claude models broken with the Fable 5 update?

1•jackjd•8m ago•0 comments

Cboe Seeks to List Prediction Market Type Options on Earnings Metrics

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-01/cboe-seeks-to-list-prediction-market-type-opti...
1•petethomas•9m ago•0 comments

Crimson Room (2004)

https://kbhgames.com/game/crimson-room
1•dieselgate•11m ago•0 comments

Best Investments over the Last 100 Years? Almost All Are Tech Companies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/business/apple-nvidia-tesla-spacex-stock-market-winners.html
1•bookofjoe•11m ago•1 comments

The empty corner in brain-to-text

https://brgsk.xyz/the-empty-corner-in-brain-to-text/
1•brgsk•11m ago•0 comments

Your Site, your rules: new AI traffic options for all customers

https://blog.cloudflare.com/content-independence-day-ai-options/
1•tcp_handshaker•13m ago•0 comments

Large Hadron Collider is shut down by CERN to make it more powerful

https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-15943949/Large-Hadron-Collider-shut-CERN.html
1•Bender•13m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Simulate what AI agents do to an engineering org (no signup)

https://www.orgonaut.co/tools/agentic-reorg-simulator/
1•orgonaut•14m ago•0 comments

FSF Librephone update: Ensuring freedom, one blob at a time

https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2026/summer/ensuring-freedom-one-blob-at-a-time
2•g-b-r•14m ago•0 comments

Stop Quoting Steve Ballmer

https://www.boxofcables.dev/stop-quoting-steve-ballmer/
1•haydenbarnes•14m ago•1 comments

Meta is reportedly building its own cloud business

https://www.engadget.com/2206249/meta-is-reportedly-building-its-own-cloud-business/
1•tcp_handshaker•15m ago•0 comments

What Can't Fable Do?

1•alimhaq•16m ago•0 comments

Flickr – Senior SRE – Remote (US) – Full-Time

https://www.flickr.com/jobs?gh_jid=7822735&gh_src=7b63e17d1
1•Photoworkisfun•17m ago•0 comments

Tidesman: Native MCP server for Apple Container's Linux container workflows

https://tidesman.dev/
1•JeronimoColon•18m ago•0 comments

Polymarket

https://unlimitedhangout.com/2026/06/investigative-series/the-secret-history-of-polymarket-part-1/
2•some-guy•19m ago•0 comments

Koah – Ad network built for AI

https://www.koahlabs.com
1•mkchoi212•20m ago•0 comments

Code Reviews Don't Scale

https://medium.com/@ben.g.northmore/the-death-of-code-reviews-as-we-know-them-d9a3e8d6795e
1•surprisefox•20m ago•2 comments

Show HN: Forgejo Appliance, a private Git server based on OrbStack and Tailscale

https://github.com/highpost/forgejo-appliance
1•highpost•20m ago•1 comments

Why don't we get more daylight faster after the winter solstice?

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/science-and-technology/650632/explainer-why-don-t-we-get-more-daylight...
3•billybuckwheat•20m ago•0 comments

SoftBank renews talks for $10B loan against OpenAI stake, adds concessions

https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/softbank-renews-talks-10-billion-loan-against-openai-...
1•JumpCrisscross•20m ago•0 comments

ZCode – Harness for GLM-5.2

https://zcode.z.ai/en
39•chvid•23m ago•147 comments

Meta's cloud plan is a hedge on Zuckerberg's AI capex, not the end of neoclouds

https://runtimewire.com/article/meta-compute-neocloud-ai-capacity-scarcity
1•ryanmerket•28m ago•0 comments