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The Business Case for Vanilla JavaScript

https://lewiscampbell.tech/blog/250430.html
6•LAC-Tech•7mo ago

Comments

copypaper•7mo 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•7mo ago
What benefits of a framework?

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

proc0•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo 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.

In-Depth Analysis of the Latest Deep Research Technology

https://huggingface.co/blog/exploding-gradients/deepresearch-survey
1•tamnd•13m ago•0 comments

Self-hosting my photos with Immich

https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2025-11-29-self-hosting-photos-with-immich/
1•birdculture•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: YOLO11 and OpenCV Object Detection in Java – Full End-to-End Tutorial

https://github.com/vvorobiov/opencv_yolo
1•ffly3r•15m ago•0 comments

Reviewing live-bootstrap and reflections on trusting trust

https://iwriteiam.nl/WHY2025_talk.html
1•matesz•16m ago•0 comments

How to detect text which has been written by ChatGPT

https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2025/1128/1545935-chatgpt-ai-writing-text-detection-words-phrases-e...
1•austinallegro•20m ago•0 comments

AI Can Generate Code. Is That a Threat to Computer Science Education?

https://www.edweek.org/technology/ai-can-generate-code-is-that-a-threat-to-computer-science-educa...
3•victorbuilds•25m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I cross-compiled llama.cpp to run on Windows XP

https://okt.ai/2025/11/30/running-llms-on-windows-xp-a-weekend-of-controlled-madness/
2•dandinu•29m ago•2 comments

ASCII SkiFree

https://js1k.com/2019-x/demo/4155
1•memalign•30m ago•0 comments

Mapping Amazing: Bee Maps

https://maphappenings.com/2025/11/06/bee-maps/
1•altilunium•35m ago•0 comments

Show HN: AIDictation – zero data retention dictation app

https://aidictation.com
1•vood•45m ago•0 comments

Kids Still Need to Learn to Code in the AI Era

https://time.com/7333550/learn-to-code-in-ai-era/
1•victorbuilds•46m ago•0 comments

How to Train a Z-Image-Turbo LoRA with AI Toolkit [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmve1_jiDpQ
1•doener•50m ago•1 comments

Collection of best papers from top AI conferences

https://github.com/SarahRastegar/Best-Papers-Top-Venues
3•Maro•51m ago•0 comments

UC San Diego launches global consortium to reshape CS education in the AI era

https://today.ucsd.edu/story/transforming-computer-science-education-in-the-age-of-ai
1•victorbuilds•52m ago•0 comments

New Product, Editaimg: AI Image Editor

https://editaimg.com
1•reno_welch•54m ago•0 comments

Understanding Electrons

https://quicycle.com/understanding-electrons/
1•lhmiles•55m ago•0 comments

EndeavourOS: Lightweight Arch-based, terminal centric system

https://endeavouros.com/
1•doener•1h ago•0 comments

EvilAI Operators Use AI-Generated Code and Fake Apps for Far-Reaching Attacks

https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/research/25/i/evilai.html
2•LiamPowell•1h ago•1 comments

Universal Blue: A manufacturing process that focuses on community-driven sharing

https://universal-blue.org/
3•doener•1h ago•0 comments

Tilesets and Makefiles

https://yasendinkov.com/posts/tilesets/
1•thunderbong•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: New minor version 3.2.1 of HMPL

https://github.com/hmpl-language/hmpl
1•aanthonymax•1h ago•0 comments

Vote Labour or Green?

https://rodgercuddington.substack.com/p/vote-labour-or-green
2•freespirt•1h ago•4 comments

Sticking 2C-T-2 Up My Ass

https://psychotechnology.substack.com/p/on-sticking-2c-t-2-up-my-ass-2930
2•eatitraw•1h ago•0 comments

Generative AI Compensates for Age-Related Cognitive Decline in Decision Making

https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.21164
1•thinkingemote•1h ago•0 comments

AI Eyes on the Road: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Traffic Surveillance

https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06480
4•thinkingemote•1h ago•0 comments

Assessing the impact of surveillance cameras on crime

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304387825001087
3•thinkingemote•1h ago•0 comments

Reddit Migrates Comment Back End from Python to Go Microservice to Halve Latency

https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2025/05/06/30_years_mysql/
11•hu3•1h ago•4 comments

Show HN: PDF Quick – Free PDF tools with 100% client-side processing

https://www.pdfquick.in
4•nistamaska•1h ago•0 comments

MasonEffect update (1.0.30): faster particle morphing and improved stability

1•fe-hyunsu•1h ago•0 comments

Building a Marketplace

1•samirahh•1h ago•1 comments