frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

The Business Case for Vanilla JavaScript

https://lewiscampbell.tech/blog/250430.html
6•LAC-Tech•11mo ago

Comments

copypaper•11mo 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•11mo ago
What benefits of a framework?

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

proc0•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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.

SmolBSD – build your own minimal BSD system

https://smolbsd.org/#about
1•rodrigo975•1m ago•0 comments

Deep Dive into Claude's Memory Architecture

https://twitter.com/spandan_madan/status/2045336831999475789
1•spandan_madan•3m ago•0 comments

The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate but Not Instantiate Consciousness

https://deepmind.google/research/publications/231971/
1•joshus•14m ago•0 comments

Open Soucrce AI-powered screen recording

https://github.com/getcoherence/studio
1•keithfawcett•15m ago•0 comments

I built a multi-turn clinical safety eval framework for LLMs

https://medium.com/@deeps.subramaniam/part-2-what-the-numbers-say-and-why-that-matters-more-than-...
2•deepikaa_s•15m ago•0 comments

Ohio's nursing homes are dumping patients at homeless shelters

https://apnews.com/article/ohio-nursing-home-patients-homeless-shelters-9c000eeddc9c9411f44fd605f...
2•petethomas•16m ago•0 comments

Ternary Bonsai: Top Intelligence at 1.58 Bits

https://prismml.com/news/ternary-bonsai
1•nnx•17m ago•0 comments

Claude Code Model Chooser

https://bendansby.com/model-chooser.html
1•webwielder2•17m ago•0 comments

Unweight: We compressed an LLM 22% without sacrificing quality

https://blog.cloudflare.com/unweight-tensor-compression/
4•subset•22m ago•1 comments

Quantum-resistant cryptocurrency node built in Rust with FALCON-512 and RandomX

https://github.com/Kstyle12/qubit-topcoin
1•kstyle12•25m ago•3 comments

Cursor in talks to raise $2B+ at $50B valuation as enterprise growth surges

https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/17/sources-cursor-in-talks-to-raise-2b-at-50b-valuation-as-enterpr...
3•evo_9•31m ago•0 comments

I watch my parents meet a predator that hard work cannot beat

https://substack.com/home/post/p-194559908
2•kyanfeat•32m ago•1 comments

Operation Gladio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
1•Jimmc414•36m ago•0 comments

Friday Squid Blogging: New Giant Squid Video

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/04/friday-squid-blogging-new-giant-squid-video-2.html
1•omer_k•40m ago•0 comments

Bodega Cats of New York

https://bodegacatsofnewyork.com
1•zdw•41m ago•0 comments

Objection.ai - The AI Tribunal of Truth

https://objection.ai/
1•kawera•42m ago•0 comments

White House and Anthropic hold meetings over Mythos model

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyv10e1d13po
1•_josh_meyer_•51m ago•1 comments

The Business Plot of 1933

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
3•Jimmc414•55m ago•0 comments

Channel decorrelation: 52.8% reduction across Kodak suite, no ML or codec mods [pdf]

https://github.com/PearsonZero/asymmetric-channel-decorrelation/blob/main/baetzel_2026_kodak_benc...
1•PearsonZero•1h ago•0 comments

The nine-to-five PhD: mere myth or an achievable goal?

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00509-9
3•jyunwai•1h ago•0 comments

Effective Conversational AI Book: Detailed Review

https://noroinsight.com/effective-conversational-ai-book-review/
1•teleforce•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Small, an x402 powered writing site

https://getsmall.xyz/
2•trezm•1h ago•0 comments

Claude Experiment "PersMEM" Rep5: The Distributional Bias and the Third Instance

1•asixicle•1h ago•0 comments

Ketamine for negative and depressive symptoms in schizophrenia

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2026.1766485/full
1•PaulHoule•1h ago•0 comments

Human Accelerated Regions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_accelerated_regions
1•rolph•1h ago•0 comments

The rate trap: how one architecture decision kills flexibility

https://github.com/getlago/lago/wiki/The-rate-trap:-how-one-architecture-decision-kills-flexibility
1•danoandco•1h ago•0 comments

H.R.8250 Parents Decide Act – trying to force OS age verification US-wide

https://old.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1so9wm8/hr8250_parents_decide_act_this_is_bad/
4•LorenDB•1h ago•2 comments

Diving into Starlink's User Terminal Firmware

https://blog.quarkslab.com/starlink.html
5•techgq•1h ago•1 comments

New AI-generated videos of Iran war spread across social media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mKCBAM4wZs
2•mgh2•1h ago•0 comments

Traders place $760M bet on falling oil ahead of Hormuz announcement

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/traders-place-760-million-bet-fal...
9•Jimmc414•1h ago•2 comments