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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.

Public Service Decline and the Populist Right: Evidence from England's NHS [pdf]

https://catherinedevries.eu/NHS.pdf
1•pseudalopex•1m ago•0 comments

Five Rust teams adopt LLM rules to protect human code review

https://runtimewire.com/article/rust-teams-adopt-llm-contribution-policy
1•ryanmerket•2m ago•0 comments

Read HN twice a day for the last decade. Here's my list of S-Tier HN links

1•vivzkestrel•2m ago•0 comments

Wordle but small AI mini challanges

https://shorts.bridge-jobs.com/
1•SaazM•2m ago•0 comments

Has the New Cocaine Arrived?

https://www.playboy.com/read/politics/they-say-its-better-than-coke-its-also-more-addictive
1•speckx•3m ago•0 comments

KIDS Act would put Washington in charge of how we can communicate online

https://expression.fire.org/p/the-kids-act-would-put-washington
1•timr•3m ago•0 comments

Show HN: What if one fund held tokenized Gold, tech stocks and digital assets?

https://wealtii.com/funds/wealtii-tech-digital-asset-growth-fund
1•zayd7861•3m ago•0 comments

Show HN: ResizeKit – Browser-only image resizer for developer asset packs

https://resizekit.app
1•mhova•4m ago•0 comments

Google Assistant will disappear from your phone next month

https://www.theverge.com/tech/975516/google-assistant-android-phones-tablets-shutdown
1•Brajeshwar•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: AgentTerm – open tools to replace the terminal for any coding-agent CLI

https://github.com/albertwujj/agent-term
1•aywu•5m ago•0 comments

Spend More Time Talking to Humans

https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/spend-more-time-talking-to-humans
1•gpi•5m ago•0 comments

The Winners of Trump's A.I. Safety Plan

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/05/business/dealbook/winners-trump-ai-policy.html
3•sbulaev•7m ago•0 comments

Moving Forward from Hot Fable Summer

https://alexstamos.com/p/moving-forward-from-hot-fable-summer
1•secalex•7m ago•0 comments

Aristotle quotes on virtue, knowledge, and happiness

https://www.campion.edu.au/blog/top-25-aristotle-quotes-on-virtue-knowledge-and-happiness/
2•teleforce•8m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Vocab Top – AI-powered vocabulary builder that helps you retain words

https://www.vocab.top/
2•LandoLorinse•8m ago•0 comments

I'm Publishing Every Medical Record I Have [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krP9EGyLCRE
1•imtany•9m ago•0 comments

Google Is in Talks for a $1.5B-Plus Deal with Mechanize

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-mechanize-deal-talent-tech-ai-coding-2026-8
1•gmays•9m ago•0 comments

Will IVR Still Exists?

https://www.roycehaynes.com/articles/will-ivr-still-exists/
1•roycehaynes•9m ago•0 comments

Review: Job-Less Utopia

https://borretti.me/article/review-job-less-utopia
1•ibobev•9m ago•0 comments

Got a hot date? A secondhand SK Hynix jacket is perfect as bonuses raise cachet

https://www.koreajoongangdaily.com/business/got-a-hot-date-this-secondhand-sk-hynix-jacket-is-per...
1•Bluestein•10m ago•0 comments

The Wild West: Planning for a more multipolar and volatile world

https://www.lynalden.com/june-2026-newsletter/
1•rzk•10m ago•0 comments

Rubin Observatory's first LSST Camera release: 500k galaxies in the COSMOS field

https://rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-new-window-cosmos-field
1•MarcoDewey•10m ago•0 comments

Intelligence Is Not the Main Bottleneck

https://www.writingruxandrabio.com/p/intelligence-is-not-the-main-bottleneck
1•rruxandra_l•10m ago•0 comments

Purely functional digital circuit simulator (SICP 3.3)

https://entropicthoughts.com/sicp-3-3-pure-digital-circuit-simulator
1•ibobev•10m ago•0 comments

EWW, the Emacs browser you underestimate

https://en.andros.dev/blog/e0e00b4b/eww-the-emacs-browser-you-underestimate/
1•ibobev•10m ago•0 comments

TSON – A JSON superset with immutable, hash-pinned schemas

https://tson.io/
1•andrewjneumann•11m ago•0 comments

RL Is Bottlenecked by Inference. Scale It Independently

https://skypilot.ai/blog/slime-agentic-rl
3•alex000kim•11m ago•0 comments

When people think AI did the creative work, task meaning and effort decline

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/when-people-think-ai-did-the-creative-work-task-meaning-and-ef...
2•helsinkiandrew•11m ago•0 comments

Microsoft Cracks Down on Tokenmaxxing

https://sources.news/p/microsoft-cracks-down-on-tokenmaxxing
1•gmays•11m ago•0 comments

Count(distinct) Is Too Slow: Approximations and Sampling in Postgres

https://www.snowflake.com/en/blog/engineering/postgres-count-distinct-approximation/
1•craigkerstiens•12m ago•0 comments