frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

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.

"The Fate of the Riemann Hypothesis" by Richard Evan Schwartz [pdf]

https://www.math.brown.edu/reschwar/Stories/AI.pdf
1•bananaflag•6m ago•0 comments

ProofWiki

https://proofwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page
1•Tomte•7m ago•0 comments

Monitoring the distribution of euro coins across borders (2021)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352340921003656
1•Tomte•7m ago•0 comments

Salesforce CEO says the 'SaaSpocalypse' is nonsense

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/26/salesforce-ceo-marc-benioff-saaspocalypse-nonsense.html
1•adletbalzhanov•10m ago•0 comments

Experiments with AI – Structure of Third Party Agentic Apps

https://karankurani.com/writing/post/w_20260722063839_af741a/experiments-with-ai-structure-of-thi...
1•BIackSwan•12m ago•0 comments

Record attempt: Longest train journey in the EU

https://crossborderrail.eu/longestjourney/
1•SiempreViernes•12m ago•0 comments

Looking for few users feedback for my community project

1•Chorum•13m ago•1 comments

Got a bunch of things to do, hate procrastination, any advice is welcome

https://textlog.cc/post/209
2•stagas•13m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: AI for Home Lab Infra?

1•voakbasda•15m ago•0 comments

Candy Toxins

https://exposingfoodtoxins.com/candy/
1•walterbell•15m ago•0 comments

Andrew Tate offered secret 'espionage' classes to exploit the dirty secrets of t

https://san.com/cc/manosphere-influencer-andrew-tate-faces-sexual-misconduct-charges-a-data-leak-...
2•pir8life4me•15m ago•1 comments

Blink

https://github.com/megootronic/Blink
2•megootronic•18m ago•0 comments

Best resources to learn inference engineering?

2•MihirSharma15•19m ago•1 comments

Which of these existed first? Quiz on textlog

https://textlog.cc/post/2895
3•stagas•20m ago•0 comments

Intern Spotlight: 2025 Software Engineering Summer Projects

https://www.hudsonrivertrading.com/hrtbeat/intern-spotlight-2025-software-engineering-summer-proj...
2•judicious•21m ago•0 comments

An Ode to Ben Thompson

https://www.mbi-deepdives.com/an-ode-to-ben-thompson/
2•gmays•22m ago•0 comments

Norway Shrugged

https://paragraph.com/@hagaetc/norway-shrugged
3•vinnyglennon•23m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Hillock: Local neuro-symbolic memory engine in <1.2GB VRAM

https://github.com/roandejager/Hillock
3•roandejager5•23m ago•0 comments

Scalable watermarking for identifying large language model outputs [pdf]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08025-4
2•thunderbong•24m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Skills MCP

3•gengirish•26m ago•1 comments

Resurrecting an old hack to build UI in GitHub READMEs

https://blog.jse.li/posts/markdown/
2•eat_veggies•27m ago•0 comments

Google Maps Now Shows 'Lake America' Instead of Lake Ontario

https://www.wired.com/story/google-maps-now-shows-lake-america-instead-of-lake-ontario/
2•khazhoux•28m ago•1 comments

Running SQLite Apps on Docker and Kubernetes with Litestream

https://openrun.dev/blog/litestream/
6•ajayvk•29m ago•1 comments

Going Founder Mode on Cancer – By Elliot Hershberg

https://centuryofbio.com/p/sid
1•vinnyglennon•30m ago•0 comments

Substantial under-detection of human rabies cases in the United States

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44528-026-00031-4
1•bucket2015•31m ago•0 comments

How to work remotely from France: the 2026 visa guide for digital nomads

https://www.foxapply.com/blog/en/work-remotely-from-france-digital-nomad-visa-guide
2•josanjohnata•31m ago•0 comments

Claude Skill – sourced research on how 5 social apps work

https://github.com/elchrysaki/social-app-teardown
1•elchrysaki•31m ago•0 comments

4000-Series Integrated Circuits

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4000-series_integrated_circuits
2•peter_d_sherman•33m ago•0 comments

Pyramid Replacement

https://intelligence-curse.ai/pyramid/
1•miletus•34m ago•0 comments

USDA cyclospora research projects shelved amid funding cuts and relocations

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/30/usda-cyclospora-research-projects-01055989
1•cocacola1•34m ago•0 comments