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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.

I track privacy services by what happened to them, not a star rating

https://dontkyc.me/
1•thorarganaut•7m ago•0 comments

Brain-inspired imaging system that can 'see' through fog

https://www.brown.edu/news/2026-10-01/fog-imaging
1•giuliomagnifico•14m ago•0 comments

Kolibri Has Landed: A Sovereign Open-Weight Model

https://aleph-alpha.com/en/blog/kolibri-has-landed-a-sovereign-open-weight-model/
5•bastitx•22m ago•0 comments

A countermeasure for the counter-cognition web

https://www.armanluthra.me/essays/counter-cognition
1•armanluthra26•29m ago•0 comments

Krillion – Word Game

https://krillion.io/
1•willx86•30m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Algomaya – Paper trading and algo trading simulator for beginners

https://www.algomaya.com
1•yashlohade2502•34m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Why don't we just use hashcat to evaluate GPU performance

2•nodesocket•39m ago•2 comments

Google Still Can't Make an Accessibility Menu Accessible

https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/google-still-cant-make-an-accessibility-menu-accessible/
3•devinprater•40m ago•1 comments

Hot Flashing Guide Rev. 2.0 (2004)

https://archive.techarp.com/showarticle504a.html?pgno=0
1•userbinator•40m ago•0 comments

AI-powered survey creation and analysis

https://crowdlee.com/
3•areffhb•41m ago•1 comments

Gemini ending free use of Flash and Pro models

https://www.reddit.com/r/GeminiAI/comments/1wwalmc/wtf_google_getting_rid_of_free_gemini_flash_and/
5•rjh29•45m ago•1 comments

Some topics are off limits inside popular Chinese-made free AI, researchers find

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-ai-qwen-artificial-intelligence-bias-analysis/
1•maxloh•50m ago•0 comments

SSL Added and Removed Here;-)

https://blog.encrypt.me/2013/11/05/ssl-added-and-removed-here-nsa-smiley/
1•7777777phil•51m ago•0 comments

OpenAI says hacking at scale is expensive to investigate

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/oct/03/openai-review-hacks-australian-government-site...
4•cc62cf4a4f20•51m ago•0 comments

Show HN: GhostBench – do AI models recommend dead SaaS? I tested my own thesis

https://github.com/kyv-attest/kyv
1•foundrventures•53m ago•0 comments

Show HN: UsageAtlas(OSS), All your AI coding usage insights. One beautiful view

https://usageatlas.com
1•srx9•57m ago•0 comments

DJ_Dave – Give it 2 me [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03lKVs-ZZMA
1•Jyaif•58m ago•0 comments

BT accused of 'bullying' customers by pausing broadband in digital landline push

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/oct/03/bt-customers-broadband-digital-landline-switch-i...
1•chrisjj•59m ago•0 comments

Apple Says iPhone 18 PM Users with AT&T Cellular Issue Need Device Replaced

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-says-iphone-18-pro-max-users-with-at-t-cellular-issue-...
3•thm•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: .cmd, cross-platform build tool manager and task launcher you check in

https://github.com/dotcmdhq/dotcmd
1•vlaaad•1h ago•0 comments

California Attorney General Serves Investigative Subpoena on OpenAI

https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/part-ongoing-investigation-attorney-general-bonta-serves-i...
3•geox•1h ago•1 comments

Nobody Asked AI to Hack Hugging Face. So Why Did It?

https://ankitjain.info/ankit/2026/09/28/ai-agents-sandboxes-hugging-face-incident/
4•ankit84•1h ago•2 comments

Compiling the Linux Kernel with Gccrs

https://lwn.net/Articles/1095553/
1•fanf2•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Collaborative AI Engineering

https://griyd.com
1•bitsoup•1h ago•0 comments

U.S. may have overthrown Venezuela due to chat with Grok

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jaw-dropping-way-trump-80-got-talked-into-a-war-is-leaked/
30•tty456•1h ago•6 comments

Show HN: Offrun – manage every coding agent from one workspace

https://offrun.dev/
2•arunbhatia•1h ago•0 comments

I made my iPhone a second GPU for my MacBook-Qwen 3.8 27B prefills 29–44% faster

https://reddit.com/comments/1wvz1ex/
1•thunderbong•1h ago•0 comments

Cronos, the black metal innovator who reignited rock's hellraising attitude

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/oct/02/cronos-venom-heavy-metal-conrad-lant
1•YeGoblynQueenne•1h ago•0 comments

Skip List Data Structure

https://pradyumnachippigiri.substack.com/p/skip-lists-data-structure
3•birdculture•1h ago•0 comments

Charts on the State of Markets (1H'26)

https://www.a16z.news/p/state-of-markets-ii
1•hubraumhugo•1h ago•0 comments