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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.

Kimi Work attaches raw agent sessions to feedback reports

1•ryanmerket•1m ago•0 comments

See how an H100 works in 3D with threejs

https://gpu.kylejeong.com/
1•Kylejeong21•1m ago•0 comments

What on Earth is Google doing?

https://www.digitaldigging.org/p/how-to-plant-a-nuclear-plant-in-iran
1•strogonoff•4m ago•0 comments

ESPConnect

https://github.com/thelastoutpostworkshop/ESPConnect
1•skibz•6m ago•0 comments

Antitrust: The Monster Case (1975, IBM)

https://time.com/archive/6846827/antitrust-the-monster-case/
1•asawfofor•7m ago•0 comments

The New Bottlenecks After Coding

https://robotpaper.ai/the-new-bottlenecks-after-coding/
1•royosherove•7m ago•0 comments

The teenagers who wired Romania [audio]

https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/p0p2vc20
1•alibarber•12m ago•0 comments

Magnus Carlsen Retains Chess Esports World Cup Title

https://www.chess.com/news/view/magnus-carlsen-wins-2026-esports-world-cup
2•speckx•12m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Stay connected across Africa, from landing to Safari

https://safariesim.com/
1•not_wowinter13•17m ago•0 comments

Why tech bosses keep sharing their manifestos about AI

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz97ljy91zxo
3•tcp_handshaker•22m ago•0 comments

Israeli PR wants to answer your ChatGPT questions

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2026/08/14/israeli-pr-wants-to-answer-you...
6•computerliker•25m ago•0 comments

Short Memory

https://www.deer.psu.edu/short-memory/
2•lumpa•28m ago•0 comments

Deadly forgotten tornado was worst in state history

https://www.offbeatoregon.com/2412e.long-creek-bomb-cyclone_682.511.html
2•joebig•29m ago•1 comments

Tiny glitches appear over South America due to a weak spot in Earth's field

https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleEarthFinds/comments/1ke63zw/psa_there_are_lot_of_tiny_colorful_gli...
1•thunderbong•29m ago•0 comments

Depleted strategic oil reserve nears level that raises concerns about damage

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/15/strategic-petroleum-reserve-spr-oil-iran-war-caverns.html
2•anigbrowl•29m ago•2 comments

Guide your development, documentation are code

https://github.com/snowballons/docs-as-code-primer
1•snowballons•30m ago•0 comments

Super El Niño Keeps Growing as New Forecasts Reach Record Territory Ahead Winter

https://www.severe-weather.eu/long-range-2/super-el-nino-growth-accelerating-to-record-strength-f...
1•dgellow•31m ago•0 comments

Why standing at your desk may be little better than sitting

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/08/14/why-standing-at-your-desk-may-be-litt...
2•vinni2•31m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Has anyone solved reproducible deployment of native mobile platforms?

1•rezvovmobile•33m ago•0 comments

A Few Foundations Shape American Higher Education

https://www.aei.org/commentary/how-a-few-foundations-shape-american-higher-education/
1•paulpauper•38m ago•0 comments

Austin Scholar #222: The three things that make a kid love learning

https://austinscholar.substack.com/p/austin-scholar-222-the-three-things
1•paulpauper•38m ago•0 comments

Job Recession in Higher Education

https://gadlevanon.substack.com/p/job-recession-in-higher-education
3•paulpauper•38m ago•0 comments

So How Is AI Drug Discovery Doing, Really?

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/so-how-ai-drug-discovery-doing-really
20•AnodicElegy•39m ago•7 comments

Understanding reinforcement learning for model training from scratch

https://medium.com/data-science-collective/understanding-reinforcement-learning-for-model-trainin...
1•teleforce•40m ago•0 comments

IBM Simon (1994): the original smartphone, explained in its own ad [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoTFywZpPcc
6•kls0e•40m ago•0 comments

Reflections on Airbnb

https://medium.com/@rchang/reflections-on-airbnb-6c213b027c69
2•philipfweiss•41m ago•0 comments

The world's largest App Clip deployment

https://larrysalibra.com/the-worlds-largest-app-clip-deployment/
1•larrysalibra•42m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Ive quit six systems for tracking my illness. What works?

1•Abh1Works•42m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Every MUNI, BART and Caltrain in SF on a Live Map

https://github.com/UtpalJayNadiger/wheres-my-muni
2•iacguy•43m ago•0 comments

If I download a 100GB file, does my computer get physically heavier?

https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/1voz7kz/if_i_download_a_massive_100gb_file_do...
6•nomilk•53m ago•3 comments