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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.

How Tippi Hedren made Vietnamese refugees into nail salon magnates

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32544343
1•thunderbong•49s ago•0 comments

Tesla Driver Tries 'I Wasn't Driving' Excuse to Get Out of Speeding Ticket

https://gizmodo.com/tesla-driver-tries-the-old-i-wasnt-driving-excuse-to-get-out-of-speeding-tick...
1•ripe•1m ago•1 comments

Agentic Constellations: Cartography of the Hidden

https://zkm.de/en/2026/10/agentic-constellations-cartography-of-the-hidden
1•bryanrasmussen•4m ago•0 comments

Google doesn't need the LLM crown

https://www.semafor.com/article/08/07/2026/google-doesnt-need-the-llm-crown
1•thm•5m ago•0 comments

Windows 11's Weather app uses ~1GB RAM

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2026/08/linux-vs-windows-weather-app-ram
2•prymitive•6m ago•0 comments

Transmission has been forked as "ReTransmission"

https://github.com/transmission/transmission/discussions/9031
1•jonatanholmgren•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Helicopter Charter and Rentals

https://helicopter.rentals/
1•mpel•11m ago•0 comments

As AI guzzles water and energy, we are facing a choice: datacentres or homes?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/09/slough-famous-the-office-datacentres-locals...
2•tomwphillips•11m ago•1 comments

Apple lied under oath to a federal court. The decision to lie came from Tim Cook

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/technology/apple-app-store-antitrust.html
5•Carell•14m ago•0 comments

Visor – a QR code that's also a live pay-per-call API

https://acp-x402-scriptmasterlabs.onrender.com/vc
1•scriptmaster•18m ago•0 comments

What My Tattoo Artist Taught Me About Life After 50

https://restlessurban.com/feature/what-my-tattoo-artist-taught-me/
2•moonlighter•18m ago•0 comments

Rabies in Cape fur seals highlights an unprecedented shift in rabies ecology

https://www.woah.org/en/rabies-detected-in-cape-fur-seals-highlights-an-unprecedented-shift-in-ra...
2•bushwart•18m ago•0 comments

Running models on RISC-V with IREE

https://iree.dev/community/blog/2026-07-23-running-models-on-risc-v-with-iree/
1•simonpure•20m ago•0 comments

A Critical Approach of ChatGPT's Impact on Everyday Life

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-032-31732-2_9
1•geox•26m ago•0 comments

Optimal NYC Neighborhood Locator

https://www.jean.land/nyc-apts
2•imustachyou•27m ago•0 comments

FlowG: Turning Your Logs into Metrics

https://flowg.cloud/blog/logs-into-metrics
1•linkdd•27m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Play Tetris in the terminal (solo and pvp)

https://github.com/backnotprop/tuitetris
2•ramoz•29m ago•0 comments

New x86 CPUID Entry For "EVOLUTIONARY"

https://sandpile.org/x86/cpuid.htm#leaf_0000_0000h
1•ruik•29m ago•0 comments

Hypotheses

https://hypotheses.org/
2•jruohonen•30m ago•0 comments

Interviews with key Python developers from the first 25 years

https://gvanrossum.github.io/interviews/index.html
2•tosh•35m ago•0 comments

Devs to Anthropic, OpenAI, Cursor, and friends Make security and privacy default

https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/08/08/devs-to-anthropic-openai-cursor-and-friends-make...
1•Bender•37m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Rollcall – Simulated Film Development on iPhone with Shared Rolls

https://rollcall.nicksavarese.com/
1•nickooo•38m ago•0 comments

Show HN: AURcade – A tiny self-hosted Git service using cgit and SSH

https://github.com/skorotkiewicz/aurcade
1•modinfo•39m ago•0 comments

Keeping Master Green at Scale

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3302424.3303970
3•handfuloflight•42m ago•0 comments

Do the scoring rules decide the winner? 211,080 predictions re-scored five ways

https://beteamapp.com/research/prediction-league-scoring-systems/
1•beteam555•44m ago•0 comments

Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow native recompilation with mods

https://github.com/bryanthaboi/gen1recomp
1•satvikpendem•46m ago•1 comments

Flock CEO Tailed by PI to Ensure No Crimes or Cheating on Wife

https://ipvm.com/reports/priv-invest-flock-ceo
3•jhonovich•48m ago•0 comments

AI Is on Its Last Legs [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdsoe_OsnHw
2•Bender•49m ago•0 comments

Hims and Hers sent user health data to social media giants bombshell FTC lawsuit

https://nypost.com/2026/07/29/business/hims-hers-sent-users-health-data-to-social-media-giants-de...
4•randycupertino•50m ago•1 comments

Barry's Economics: The Science of the Immigration Grift [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OWqzhwsWXM
1•kklisura•51m ago•0 comments