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The Business Case for Vanilla JavaScript

https://lewiscampbell.tech/blog/250430.html
6•LAC-Tech•10mo ago

Comments

copypaper•10mo 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•10mo ago
What benefits of a framework?

I think that's why I wrote this - I almost completely fail to see them.

proc0•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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.

Athena: First cross-domain behavioral foundation model

https://markopolo.ai/newsroom/athena/
1•djshah•3m ago•0 comments

LightProto: Zero-alloc Protobuf for Java, up to 8x faster than Google's protobuf

https://github.com/streamnative/lightproto
1•matteomerli•3m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Anduin – A fast cross platform Git diff viewer inspired by Magit

https://github.com/ishanray/anduin
1•ishanr•4m ago•0 comments

Cell phone radiofrequencies make mice and rats live longer

https://github.com/zanekoch/airpods-go-brrrrr
1•LouisLazaris•5m ago•0 comments

Owesa. Professional Networking

https://www.owesa.com/
1•kelsey-owesa•11m ago•1 comments

The BIP

https://casey.github.io/blog/the-bip/
1•greyface-•11m ago•0 comments

UAE temporarily closes airspace as Middle East war forces flight disruptions

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/17/uae-airspace-closure-dubai-airport-drone-strike-middle-east-fligh...
1•petethomas•13m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Atlas for Laravel v2.5 Released

https://github.com/atlas-php/atlas
1•tmarois•15m ago•0 comments

Speeding up HTML generation by 2000%

https://bobrubbens.nl/post/speeding-up-html-generation-2000/
1•PaulHoule•18m ago•0 comments

How to Talk to Computers

https://a11ce.com/talk-to-computers.html
1•kawelea•19m ago•0 comments

Manifesto on Symbiosis: A New Paradigm for Civilization Part II

1•acehs•19m ago•0 comments

Enterprise for OpenBAO – Open Source HashiCorp Vault alternative

https://control-plane.io/enterprise-for-openbao/
1•donutshop•20m ago•0 comments

Building an Analogue Computer to Simulate Neurons

https://hackaday.com/2026/03/08/building-an-analogue-computer-to-simulate-neurons/
1•pilingual•26m ago•0 comments

Generalising the Fast Reciprocal Square Root Algorithm (2023)

https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.15600
1•adampunk•28m ago•1 comments

The future of Amazon coders is the present of Amazon warehouse workers

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/13/electronic-whipping/
14•martin-t•29m ago•1 comments

An engineering thesis disguised as a coupe: A history of the Honda Prelude

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/03/an-engineering-thesis-disguised-as-a-coupe-a-history-of-the-...
3•ProAm•29m ago•0 comments

Show HN: 1k desktop beats vendor sparse library 474× on Mistral-7B

https://rolv.ai/
1•heggenhougen•31m ago•0 comments

The Self-Defeating Prophecy (and How It Works)

https://unintendedconsequenc.es/the-self-defeating-prophecy/
1•paulorlando•31m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Skill-Crypt – encrypted skill sharing between AI agents over XMTP

https://github.com/skillcrypt-alt/skill-crypt
1•skillcrypt•33m ago•0 comments

She Hoped Ketamine Would Rewire Her Brain. She Didn't Live to See It Work

https://www.wsj.com/health/wellness/ketamine-telehealth-dangers-4a7bc8da
1•fortran77•34m ago•1 comments

More transparency and control over Gemini API costs

https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/developers-tools/more-control-over-gemini-api-co...
1•y1n0•36m ago•0 comments

FriendHike – Social hiking platform for finding trails and hiking partners

https://friendhike.com
1•renatello•37m ago•1 comments

The emdash of vibecoded UIs

https://twitter.com/allgarbled/status/2033698785529082144
2•ramoz•38m ago•0 comments

NVIDIA's new DLSS 5 drops with uncanny AI filters

https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/nvidias-new-dlss-5-drops-with-uncanny-ai-filters-and-youtub...
2•FroshKiller•39m ago•0 comments

$1 API architecture to use in new ideas

https://imgur.com/a/Z3iZene
1•lucastonelli•39m ago•1 comments

Just when you thought the chip shortage was ending wafers until 2030

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-koreas-sk-group-chairman-expects-chip-wafer-shor...
1•Horatius77•41m ago•2 comments

Show HN: TLA PreCheck – TS DSL that proves state machines via TLA+

https://github.com/kingbootoshi/tla-precheck
3•bootoshi•44m ago•0 comments

Trump asking for China's warships to help in opening of Strait of Hormuz

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-call-chinese-warships-hits-110000824.html
5•mandeepj•44m ago•1 comments

AI can guess gay or straight from photographs, with 91% accuracy (2017)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/07/new-artificial-intelligence-can-tell-whether-y...
1•maxloh•47m ago•0 comments

Video Encoding and Decoding with Vulkan Compute Shaders in FFmpeg

https://www.khronos.org/blog/video-encoding-and-decoding-with-vulkan-compute-shaders-in-ffmpeg
1•y1n0•52m ago•0 comments