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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 made an AI Interior consultant

https://studio.mystofa.com/en-US
1•assorium•2m ago•0 comments

Bitcoin's Power Law: Weak Structure, Strong Forecasts

https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.21316
1•CarlosBaquero•2m ago•0 comments

Consciousness, Gödel, and the Boundary of the Box

https://twitter.com/VFD_org/status/2057053649315013042
1•__patchbit__•4m ago•0 comments

YAML? That's Norway Problem

https://lab174.com/blog/202601-yaml-norway/
1•theanonymousone•9m ago•0 comments

New on Platform

1•rockstaradi•11m ago•0 comments

Ye Olde RFC

https://github.com/gabinante/ye-olde-rfc
1•oooyay•12m ago•0 comments

Nostr-VPN Is one of the most useful things in open source

https://git.iris.to/#/npub1xdhnr9mrv47kkrn95k6cwecearydeh8e895990n3acntwvmgk2dsdeeycm/nostr-vpn
1•abhsag24•12m ago•0 comments

70% of Faculty Vote to Overhaul Harvard Grading with a Cap

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/5/20/fas-passes-a-grade-cap/
1•k2enemy•13m ago•0 comments

List of Alleged Extraterrestrial Beings

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alleged_extraterrestrial_beings
2•thunderbong•17m ago•0 comments

Software engineering is the tipping point [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t9Kj2f6wtU
1•azhenley•19m ago•0 comments

The Mysterious XF86AudioPlay Issue

https://michael-prokop.at/blog/2026/05/20/the-mysterious-xf86audioplay-issue/
2•JNRowe•24m ago•0 comments

VPNs: The "Most Trusted" Security Tool Until Claude Roasts It in a Weekend

https://www.hacktron.ai/blog/cve-2026-0265-panos-globalprotect-cas-auth-bypass
3•jordybg•26m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Macfigure – Mac configuration in pkl. Simple alternative to Nix-Darwin

https://github.com/Quintisimo/macfigure
1•quintisimo•26m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Transition from Engineering Manager to IC

1•lavsv•27m ago•0 comments

The Secrets Revealed in SpaceX's IPO Filing

https://www.wsj.com/business/spacex-ipo-takeaways-cea33689
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•28m ago•0 comments

SpaceX Filing Reveals $4.28B Loss, Musk's Tight Grip (3)

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/capital-markets/musks-spacex-files-publicly-for-nasdaq-ipo-under-sy...
3•1vuio0pswjnm7•29m ago•0 comments

SpaceX IPO filing lays bare losses and Musk control as it stakes future on AI

https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/bound-mars-elon-musks-spacex-unveils-filing-blockbust...
3•1vuio0pswjnm7•31m ago•0 comments

Reconnecting. – – 5/5 why don't they fix codex

1•apoorvdarshan•32m ago•0 comments

Why is writing good test cases still painfully manual in 2026?

https://calendly.com/qualityfolio2026/30min
1•Daniel_Carter•33m ago•0 comments

Lazydiff: Terminal PR Review with AST-Aware Semantic Diff Rendering

https://github.com/Ataraxy-Labs/lazydiff
1•rohanucla•37m ago•0 comments

Is Python Becoming Pinyin?

https://lernerpython.com/2026/05/19/is-python-becoming-pinyin/
3•reuven•46m ago•0 comments

Rewrite System Showdown: Stochastic Search vs. EqSat

https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.19005
1•pcfwik•50m ago•0 comments

Scheme Interpreter

https://cs61a.org/proj/scheme/
1•HiPHInch•53m ago•0 comments

Understanding KV Cache: The Hidden Memory Cost of Serving LLMs

https://melchi.me/posts/kv-cache/
2•colescodes•55m ago•0 comments

Opn-Chat

https://opn-chat-v1-freebuff.vercel.app
1•fcapuz•56m ago•0 comments

Workers in India are training robots that may replace them

https://indianexpress.com/article/business/workers-india-training-robots-replace-factory-10698712/
3•methuselah_in•56m ago•0 comments

Why does the arrow (->) operator in C exist?

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13366083/why-does-the-arrow-operator-in-c-exist
5•gnabgib•1h ago•0 comments

Trump admin didn't want Ebola-exposed Americans, sent them to Berlin, Prague

https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/05/trump-admin-didnt-want-ebola-exposed-americans-sent-them-t...
5•donutshop•1h ago•0 comments

Housekeeping Wages to Top $110K Year in New York City by Early 2030s

https://loyaltylobby.com/2026/05/20/housekeeping-wages-to-top-110k-year-in-new-york-city-by-early...
1•lxm•1h ago•0 comments

Amazon E-Bikes Take Root in Manhattan and Brooklyn

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/business/amazon-cargo-bikes-delivery.html
1•lxm•1h ago•0 comments