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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.

The Fishcam – the oldest live camera on the internet (by Netscape)

https://www.fishcam.com/
1•Imustaskforhelp•1m ago•0 comments

A small hardware maker's 8GB of DRAM went from $35 to $300

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/27/memory-crunch-shaking-apple-and-microsoft-existential-for-small-g...
1•p_stuart82•1m ago•0 comments

The Illuminated Gospel of Matthew

https://www.cambridge.org/universitypress/bibles/all-titles/illuminated-gospel-matthew
1•ycombinete•3m ago•0 comments

Frame (Artificial Intelligence)

https://rtnf.substack.com/p/frame-artificial-intelligence
1•altilunium•4m ago•0 comments

Dystopian Californian community offers $500 cash reward for Americans to snitch

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15927027/san-luis-obispo-county-fireworks-reward-snitch.html
2•Bender•11m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: How to meet and work with likeminded people on the Internet?

1•sarmadgulzar•12m ago•0 comments

Self-proclaimed King of Switzerland uses loophole to build his empire for free

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20260510-how-switzerland-self-proclaimed-king-built-a-land-emp...
1•mrkn1•13m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A Living Neural Web in HTML5 Canvas

https://techoreon.github.io/verpad/canvas-playground.html
1•guptalog•15m ago•1 comments

AI-Powered Public Comments Are Entering US Climate Politics

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-06-27/how-ai-powered-public-comments-could-impact...
2•geox•15m ago•0 comments

Success = (number of attempts) × (probability of success each time)

https://www.thetrueengineer.com/p/success-number-of-attempts-probability
1•adletbalzhanov•16m ago•1 comments

NASA tests AI medic for astronauts too far from Earth to call a doctor

https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/06/27/nasa-tests-ai-medic-for-astronauts-too-far-from-...
1•Bender•17m ago•0 comments

Doctors suspected man had brain cancer. He had worms

https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/06/doctors-suspected-man-had-brain-cancer-he-actually-had-worms/
6•Bender•18m ago•0 comments

Correctness: We build distributed system correct

https://medium.com/@ryankung/correctness-how-we-build-distributed-system-correct-647490cf245b
2•ryankung•19m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Find support for your ProductHunt launch from fellow founders

https://www.launchpact.io
1•launchpact_io•20m ago•0 comments

Meta asks California lawmakers for shield from child harm penalties

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/26/exclusive-meta-asks-california-lawmakers-for-shield-from...
2•JumpCrisscross•22m ago•0 comments

Climate.us launches independent website for trusted climate information

https://www.climate.us/news-features/feed/climateus-launches-independent-website-trusted-climate-...
1•ohjeez•23m ago•0 comments

Filtered for that which motivates form

https://interconnected.org/home/2026/06/27/filtered
1•LorenDB•24m ago•0 comments

Heartbeat shapes how your brain processes information

https://www.science.org/content/article/your-heartbeat-quietly-shapes-how-your-brain-processes-in...
2•XzetaU8•24m ago•0 comments

Autology: Writing a self-rewriting Lisp (Lambda Days)

https://www.lambdadays.org/lambdadays2025/dave-kimber
1•christianbryant•26m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Hardwood 1.0: A Fast, Lightweight Apache Parquet Reader for the JVM

https://hardwood.dev/1.0.0.Final/
1•gunnarmorling•27m ago•0 comments

From Emacs to Cursor, the end of your IDEs is near

https://maleus.ai/blog/the-end-of-local-ides
1•mooreds•31m ago•2 comments

Anthropic says Alibaba used 25k accounts to mine Claude

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/anthropic-claims-alibaba-defied-trump-to-attack-claud...
3•logickkk1•34m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Ampulla: Modern TypeScript DI with NestJS Ergonomics

https://github.com/ukstv/ampulla
1•murmansk•35m ago•0 comments

It's 1996 All over Again on the New GIMP 0.54 Flatpak

https://fossforce.com/2026/06/its-1996-all-over-again-on-the-new-gimp-0-54-flatpak/
2•em-bee•37m ago•0 comments

I owe my life to a 1913 road rage incident

https://blog.plover.com/history/andor.html
2•Brajeshwar•37m ago•0 comments

What Is a File Format?

https://growingswe.com/blog/file-formats
1•jawbreaker•42m ago•0 comments

Australian rescue team uses AI-powered drone to find lost hikers [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUjteM5NwuY
1•hackerbeat•42m ago•0 comments

Remediation Asymmetry: When Agents Can Diagnose More Than They Can Fix

https://imaxxs.com/remediation-asymmetry-agents-diagnose-more-than-fix
1•imaxxs•43m ago•0 comments

Catch silent Meta/TikTok CAPI failures before they tank your matching

https://github.com/lsb11/shopify-capi-validator
1•StackArchitect•43m ago•0 comments

Native Hacker News TUI client with AI comments summary written in Golang

https://code.intellios.ai/cwnews/
1•coolwulf•46m ago•0 comments