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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.

How to build an Agent

https://ampcode.com/notes/how-to-build-an-agent
1•pramodbiligiri•5m ago•1 comments

Ex150nosauce+ACV-5 review: Bouncing off the new Bottom?

https://www.exfatloss.com/p/ex150nosauceacv-5-review-bouncing
1•paulpauper•10m ago•0 comments

Math Is Still Catching Up to the Mysterious Genius of Srinivasa Ramanujan

https://www.quantamagazine.org/srinivasa-ramanujan-was-a-genius-math-is-still-catching-up-20241021/
1•paulpauper•10m ago•0 comments

Qten AI platform for social media content creator

https://www.qten.ai/
1•bandishankar•11m ago•0 comments

Spektrafilm – Open-source Film Simulation

https://github.com/andreavolpato/spektrafilm
1•mikae1•15m ago•1 comments

Chinese Room

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
1•slopinthebag•18m ago•0 comments

How to talk about open source without making a mess

https://dirkriehle.com/2026/04/13/for-the-press-how-to-talk-about-open-source-without-making-a-mess/
1•Tomte•18m ago•0 comments

Analysis of 320k careers suggests that productive researchers stay that way

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00744-0
1•salkahfi•19m ago•0 comments

The Cadaver Synod: Putting a Dead Pope on Trial (2019)

https://daily.jstor.org/the-cadaver-synod-putting-a-dead-pope-on-trial/
1•rawgabbit•20m ago•0 comments

Como hackear O face pelo email só quero ter acesso a conta

1•lilika•20m ago•0 comments

Stardrop Supply Chain Attack Targets Venture Capital Firms, Luxury Brands

https://opensourcemalware.com/blog/stardrop-attack
2•jruohonen•24m ago•0 comments

Adding multilingual support to my puzzle game

https://qcgeneral29.itch.io/lets-learn/devlog/1489057/lets-learn-japanese
1•LandenLove•26m ago•0 comments

Pepsi was warned $7 for Doritos was too much. Now they are paying the price

https://www.independent.co.uk/us/money/pepsico-doritos-high-prices-b2952994.html
4•matthest•26m ago•1 comments

Fake Linux leader using Slack to con devs into giving up their secrets

https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/13/linux_foundation_social_engineering/
2•jruohonen•27m ago•0 comments

I built a Next.js programmatic SEO engine to drive iOS app installs

https://www.yilore.app/zh-CN
2•jalonwong•29m ago•0 comments

Extracted System Prompts from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity and More

https://github.com/asgeirtj/system_prompts_leaks/
1•beatthatflight•29m ago•0 comments

Human scientists trounce the best AI agents on complex tasks

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01199-z
2•frasermarlow•30m ago•0 comments

Millions in the US never finished college

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/millions-us-never-finished-college-040500291.html
1•lxm•32m ago•0 comments

Cephalopod Coordination Protocol, Useful for Teams Using AI Agents

https://github.com/Squid-Proxy-Lovers/ccp
3•qvipin•36m ago•1 comments

AT&T's iconic phone

https://www.theverge.com/podcast/910725/western-electric-500-att-version-history
1•colinprince•38m ago•0 comments

Google has a secret reference desk

https://cardcatalogforlife.substack.com/p/google-has-a-secret-reference-desk
6•maxutility•44m ago•1 comments

Over 4,732 Messages, He Fell in Love with an AI Chatbot. Now He's Dead

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/google-gemini-jonathan-gavalas-death-07351ab2
2•1vuio0pswjnm7•47m ago•1 comments

Mob Software: The Erotic Life of Code (2001)

https://www.dreamsongs.com/MobSoftware.html
2•pabs3•48m ago•0 comments

Mark Carney secures majority government in Canada after special election win

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/14/canada-special-election-results-pm-mark-carney-majo...
4•petermcneeley•58m ago•0 comments

Best 2000W Electric Bikes for Adults (2026): 40MPH+ Picks

https://www.dttzh.com/post/2000w-electric-bikes
1•dttzhebike•1h ago•0 comments

Mac Neo should be the follow up to the success of the MacBook Neo

https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/04/13/mac-neo-should-be-the-follow-up-to-the-huge-success-of...
2•Lwrless•1h ago•0 comments

Comprehension Debt: The Hidden Cost of AI-Generated Code

https://www.oreilly.com/radar/comprehension-debt-the-hidden-cost-of-ai-generated-code/
4•gpi•1h ago•1 comments

Dumbsmarten

https://kevinkelly.substack.com/p/dumbsmarten
1•swolpers•1h ago•0 comments

I created a YAML-based API Testing framework in Rust

https://github.com/cd-4/yapitest
1•cd-4•1h ago•1 comments

Alibaba's Qwen family captures over 50% of global open-source model downloads

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3349552/alibabas-qwen-family-captures-over-50-global-o...
2•angst•1h ago•3 comments