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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.

Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this

https://ourworldindata.org/talent-is-everywhere-opportunity-is-not
1•prakashqwerty•3m ago•0 comments

110k+ publications from 2025 might include hallucinated citations

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00969-z
1•cyclecycle•4m ago•1 comments

SQLite in Production: Lessons from Running a Store on a Single File

https://ultrathink.art/blog/sqlite-in-production-lessons
1•thunderbong•5m ago•0 comments

Show HN: ZipSee – explore remote ZIP archives using HTTP range requests

https://zipsee.pages.dev/
1•vsekar•5m ago•0 comments

Free AI video clipper using scene and speech-based segmentation

1•sunill•5m ago•0 comments

Iran Threatens to Bomb 1GW Stargate AI Datacenter in Abu Dhabi

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/iran-threatens-to-bomb-1gw-stargate-ai-d...
1•ZunarJ5•5m ago•0 comments

Chester Zoo leads national call for weather app changes

https://www.chesterzoo.org/news/chester-zoo-leads-national-call-for-weather-app-changes
1•Kaibeezy•6m ago•0 comments

Nex Life Logger, local activity tracker with AI agent integration

https://github.com/NexaiGuy/nex-life-logger
1•NexAIGuy•8m ago•0 comments

"Faking 'realness' on a computer doesn't get us anywhere new."

https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/elizabeth-goodspeed-on-analogue-creative-industry-290126
1•jruohonen•10m ago•0 comments

Power-washing and mowing: Why millions are playing games about mundane jobs

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj60r2kdnw1o
1•breve•12m ago•0 comments

The HTML Review 05

https://thehtml.review/05/
1•vinhnx•13m ago•0 comments

Some Unusual Trees

https://thoughts.wyounas.com/p/some-unusual-trees
2•simplegeek•16m ago•0 comments

Using AI to track the cost of Guinness

https://fortune.com/2026/03/30/guinness-beer-prices-ireland-anthropic-claude-ai/
2•pieterr•16m ago•0 comments

Code Is Worthless

https://nathanielfishel.substack.com/p/your-code-is-worthless
1•mpweiher•17m ago•0 comments

TurboQuant model weight compression support added to Llamacpp

https://github.com/TheTom/llama-cpp-turboquant/pull/45
4•lastdong•28m ago•1 comments

I Reverse-Engineered the YC Interview. Here's What They're Testing

https://www.the-founders-corner.com/p/i-reverse-engineered-the-yc-interview
1•baxtr•31m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Docking – extensible Linux dock in Python

https://docking.cc
1•edumucelli•31m ago•0 comments

Kwara 2026 Educator Recruitment for Coding and Digital Skills

https://www.rswebsols.com/news/recruitment-of-educators-2026-kwara-coding-digital-literacy-initia...
1•rswebsols•32m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Autonet – Decentralized AI training with constitutional governance

https://autonet.computer
1•eightrice•34m ago•0 comments

Claude subscriptions no longer cover usage on third-party tools like OpenClaw

https://twitter.com/bcherny/status/2040206440556826908
1•tosh•35m ago•1 comments

Hardware-accelerated ARM64 KVM guests on s390

https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-arm-kernel/cover/20260402042125.3948963-1-seiden@linux...
1•fanf2•38m ago•0 comments

AI World Domination Starts with Your Font Settings

https://github.com/IkanRiddle/ai-takeover-starts-with-fonts
1•IkanRiddle•39m ago•0 comments

Participatory Methods Toolkit: A practitioner's manual (2003) [pdf]

https://archive.unu.edu/hq/library/Collection/PDF_files/CRIS/PMT.pdf
1•Tomte•42m ago•0 comments

Software specialization is reversing – and it's raising the bar, not lowering it

https://dify.ai/blog/software-engineering-divide-and-converge
1•jinqueeny•44m ago•0 comments

Apple releases iOS 18 security updates for iOS 26 holdouts

https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/04/apple-releases-ios-18-security-updates-for-ios-26-holdouts/
1•JumpCrisscross•46m ago•1 comments

Signals, the push-pull based algorithm

https://willybrauner.com/journal/signal-the-push-pull-based-algorithm
2•mpweiher•49m ago•0 comments

The USA budget cuts for the war [pdf]

https://web.archive.org/web/20260403152247if_/https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/...
2•whattheheckheck•51m ago•1 comments

Dolt: Version Controlled SQL Database

https://www.dolthub.com/
1•thomascountz•51m ago•0 comments

PrismML debuts 1-bit LLM in bid to free AI from the cloud

https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/04/prismml_1bit_llm/
1•beardyw•52m ago•0 comments

Netflix, unlawful price increases. Consumers

https://en.ilsole24ore.com/art/netflix-subscription-price-increases-unlawful-refunds-up-to-eur-50...
1•01-_-•53m ago•1 comments