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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.

ProbeDeck for ClickHouse iOS App for Interactions During Incidents

1•chamav•33s ago•0 comments

CUDA Shared Memory Swizzling

https://leimao.github.io/blog/CUDA-Shared-Memory-Swizzling/
1•jxmorris12•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Orca – Instant cross-platform in-app purchase orchestration

2•pcvetkovski•2m ago•0 comments

Heart Aerospace Completes First Flight of Largest Electric Aircraft

https://www.heartaerospace.com/newsroom/heart-aerospace-completes-first-flight-of-world-s-largest...
2•chha•2m ago•1 comments

A decades-old bug in Knuth's long division (TAOCP Vol II, Algorithm 4.3.1D)

https://kolja.rs/algorithm-d/
2•nk_kolja•3m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Neal – Claude and Codex working together

https://github.com/navels/neal
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Making Of: My Website

https://ocelot.lol/blog/2026/08/07/site-making-of
2•HypnoticOcelot•4m ago•1 comments

My benchmark, it beat Ponytail on code, tokens, cost, and time

https://github.com/ujjwalredd/Dopamine
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https://github.com/alex000kim/nanoRL
6•alex000kim•5m ago•0 comments

I Use NoScript

https://daft.red/2026/08/why-i-use-noscript/
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2•malcolmfrazier•6m ago•0 comments

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https://sunomarket.com
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Weekly VSCode Grumbling

2•azatom•8m ago•0 comments

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https://wikizipf.com/?lang=en
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White House taps security firms for offensive hack-back operations

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/white-house-taps-security-firms-for-offensive-hack...
2•ilamont•10m ago•0 comments

GitHub Stacks in Jujutsu

https://alan.norbauer.com/articles/github-stacks-with-jujutsu/
2•Kinrany•11m ago•0 comments

Flock changes surveillance rules after cops used it to stalk exes

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2•BlueBerry2001•12m ago•0 comments

Tell HN: The e-mail service Posteo (dot de) is down

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3•a3w•12m ago•1 comments

I Outsmarted Pro Car Thieves [video]

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Show HN: Modern Alternative to Plausible

https://getopen.so
5•rahulbridge•14m ago•1 comments

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4•helsinkiandrew•16m ago•1 comments

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4•pcbmaker20•17m ago•0 comments

LocalSend v1.18.0 and v1.18.1 Released

https://github.com/localsend/localsend/releases
4•exploraz•17m ago•0 comments

AI Generated 3D Models Flood Market, but Almost No One Is Buying Them

https://www.404media.co/ai-generated-3d-models-flood-market-but-almost-no-one-is-buying-them/
2•Jimmc414•17m ago•0 comments

Tell HN: Claude Code Is Down

3•aurareturn•17m ago•0 comments

The Reasons Agentic Commerce Hasn't Taken Off Yet

https://authoryze.ai/blog/the-reasons-agentic-commerce-hasnt-taken-off-yet
2•kevinfee•19m ago•3 comments

Show HN: I told Claude Code never to reveal my secrets. It sent 3 of 4 anyway

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Time to Move On: Querying Without Nulls and Bags

https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.10863
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Spec Sheets Are Not Kernels: INT8 Availability on Nvidia Blackwell Ultra

https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.11693
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HN: CSS Units – every one of the 63 CSS units

https://cssunits.com/
2•mcslayer•21m ago•0 comments