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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.

The road signs that teach travellers about France

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260327-the-road-signs-that-teach-travellers-about-france
1•1659447091•3m ago•0 comments

Cleveland Clinic and IBM debut new quantum simulation workflow

https://www.ibm.com/quantum/blog/cleveland-clinic-protein-qcsc
1•rbanffy•5m ago•0 comments

Visual reasoning benchmark based on Analog Clocks

https://clockbench.ai/
1•yrds96•5m ago•0 comments

How the Media Is Failing to Hold Iran Accountable for War Crimes

https://www.camera.org/article/how-the-media-is-failing-to-hold-iran-accountable-for-war-crimes/
1•mhb•8m ago•1 comments

Secure Proxy Manager

https://fabriziosalmi.github.io/secure-proxy-manager/
1•TheTaytay•8m ago•0 comments

Zombie Netscape Won't Die

https://hackaday.com/2026/01/27/zombie-netscape-wont-die/
1•riffic•9m ago•0 comments

Toxic PFAS residue identified on 37% of California produce, new analysis finds

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/mar/29/pfas-residue-california-produce-analysis
3•bookofjoe•11m ago•1 comments

ChatGPT Won't Let You Type Until Cloudflare Reads Your React State

https://www.buchodi.com/chatgpt-wont-let-you-type-until-cloudflare-reads-your-react-state-i-decry...
3•alberto-m•12m ago•0 comments

Aldus PageMaker on the Apple Macintosh

https://stonetools.ghost.io/pagemaker-mac/
2•rbanffy•15m ago•0 comments

Phantom of Heilbronn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn
1•omnibrain•15m ago•0 comments

Circumstantial Complexity, LLMs and Large Scale Architecture

https://datagubbe.se/aiarch/
2•rbanffy•16m ago•0 comments

AI drives companies to reorganize around loops, not functions

https://blog.sshh.io/p/the-transposed-organization
1•sshh12•18m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Nativly –Add One DNS record to rank your site in 60 languages on Google

https://www.nativly.app/
1•Francis221•20m ago•1 comments

Apple forces on-device age verification in UK release of iOS 26.4

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/126788
3•cdinu•21m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Beval – Simple evaluations for your AI product

https://www.beval.space/
1•raviisoccupied•23m ago•0 comments

Is 1995 the Last Time I Install Debian? [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdD_sLPE0pg
1•st_goliath•25m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Adsense Alternatives in 2026?

2•dpapathanasiou•27m ago•0 comments

Sky Wins Irish Court Order to Unmask 300 Pirate IPTV Users via Revolut Bank

https://torrentfreak.com/sky-wins-irish-court-order-to-unmask-300-pirate-iptv-users-via-revolut-b...
1•nixass•28m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: M5 MacBook Pro buyers, worth spending the $$$ to maybe run LLMs local?

2•tpurves•30m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Null. – Free RSVP speed reader built for ADHD brains

https://www.appnull.com/landing
1•lip404•31m ago•1 comments

Creating West Coast Buddhism

https://letter.palladiummag.com/p/creating-west-coast-buddhism
1•haltingproblem•31m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I Built a Scrum Poker App with Geese

https://goosescrumming.com/
2•apanfilovs•31m ago•0 comments

Elaris – modular home/building automation with ESP32 and MQTT

https://github.com/elaris-control/core
1•Diabaths•31m ago•0 comments

I Decompiled the White House's New App

https://blog.thereallo.dev/blog/decompiling-the-white-house-app
2•gpi•32m ago•1 comments

Midnight train from GA: A view of America from the tracks as airports struggle

https://isp.netscape.com/news/story/0001/20260329/e4d8ea591b3b036142c2bf2dee7dff5a
11•walterbell•33m ago•4 comments

Bridge 3C Computer – By John Paul Wohlscheid

https://computeradsfromthepast.substack.com/p/bridge-3c-computer
1•rbanffy•33m ago•0 comments

The Nftables in Linux Explained with Examples

https://www.computernetworkingnotes.com/linux-tutorials/how-to-configure-iptables-firewall-in-lin...
1•smartmic•41m ago•0 comments

Tikita is a First Market place for all kind for Digital product

https://commerce-core-73.emergent.host/
1•tikita•43m ago•1 comments

The consequences of Trump's Iran war flip-flops [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMLnltuYanM
2•teleforce•44m ago•0 comments

How Sickle Cell Disease and Malaria Defined Evolution

https://globalhealthnow.org/2024-06/how-sickle-cell-disease-and-malaria-defined-evolution
2•paulpauper•46m ago•0 comments