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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.

Bug test: I think I cannot delete video posts, even right away

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCljI3cIObU
1•consumer451•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: GatiNow – branded booking pages with built-in payments

https://www.gatinow.com/features
1•chowkodali•1m ago•0 comments

SpacetimeDB and BitCraft (2023)

https://bitcraftonline.com/news/spacetimedb-and-bitcraft
1•peter_d_sherman•2m ago•0 comments

Trump's brazen crypto bank scheme may be his sleaziest yet

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/general/trump-s-brazen-crypto-bank-scheme-may-be-his-sleaziest-ye...
1•petethomas•4m ago•0 comments

59 Days left "Nobody is Clean"

1•gladiator291288•4m ago•0 comments

Claude driving an autonomous RC car [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBpQiv-ZlVM
1•nreece•7m ago•0 comments

Fair Witness

https://gtraviswhite.substack.com/p/fair-witness
1•jmward01•11m ago•0 comments

HTTP Server API: A Draft Specification

http://www.jasnell.me/posts/http-server-api-draft
1•jcbhmr•12m ago•0 comments

.NET Foundation Statement on Open Source Maintenance Fees

https://pro.dnf.cloud.sitefinity.com/news-events/detail/.net-foundation-statement-on-open-source-...
1•nreece•12m ago•0 comments

Gisting: Compressing LLM Agent context to ↑ throughput and ↓ cost

https://shopify.engineering/gisting
1•mellosouls•13m ago•0 comments

AbracadaNames: A names explorer website

https://abracadanames.com/
1•PopFlamingo•14m ago•0 comments

Making React Testing Library Tests 43% Faster

https://sigh.dev/posts/making-react-testing-library-faster/
1•STRiDEX•15m ago•0 comments

Weather.baby

https://blog.harrison.page/weatherbaby/
1•harrisonpage•16m ago•1 comments

Berkeley Law prohibits AI use in classes (by default)

https://www.law.berkeley.edu/academics/registrar/academic-rules/artificial-intelligence-policy/
2•hackerBanana•18m ago•0 comments

Munich Court Proposes €1.05 Monthly Codec Royalty for Netflix Subscribers

https://streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/munich-court-proposes-e1-05-monthly-codec-royalty-fo...
1•dabinat•20m ago•0 comments

Donald Trump turns on Washington's museums in new culture war offensive

https://www.ft.com/content/659a00b4-be9b-467b-a676-cb73e2d3d64d
2•petethomas•21m ago•0 comments

Histoire: Storybook but Vite

https://histoire.dev/
1•jcbhmr•24m ago•0 comments

Watermarking Runif

https://minimallysufficient.com/posts/watermarking-runif/
1•minsufficient•25m ago•0 comments

ICE Wants to Give Every Officer a Body Cam, Restrict Public Access to Recordings

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/08/20/ice-says-it-will-fit-every-officer-with-a-body-cam-restrict-p...
2•hn_acker•26m ago•1 comments

Show HN: A 4 mm aluminium shower shelf held up by the tap cones

https://blog.oxplot.com/shower-shelf-held-by-taps/
1•oxplot•28m ago•0 comments

Genesis GV90

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a73465349/2028-genesis-gv90-revealed/
1•dzonga•29m ago•0 comments

I benched frontier AI LLM models on politics, ethics, and personality traits

https://www.blackbench.ai/
1•ShawnxHe•30m ago•1 comments

Commoditizing Determinism

https://cohesivesystems.com/library/articles/commoditizing-determinism/
1•iroha1203•30m ago•0 comments

As workplace surveillance grows, it's good to know the ways employers watch you

https://apnews.com/article/employer-surveillance-bossware-tracking-workplace-7d61e74242b872457bbf...
7•devonnull•31m ago•0 comments

A minimal cross-platform C rapid GUI Application Builder

https://zelang-dev.github.io/c-gui/
3•thetechstech•32m ago•0 comments

Mitigating Reward Hacking as Institutional Design

https://www.beren.io/2026-08-17-Mitigating-Reward-Hacking-as-Institutional-Design/
1•sshh12•33m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Pigame – pi+LLM plays black-box browser games via observe/move tools

https://github.com/ifoxhz/pigame
1•ifoxhz•35m ago•0 comments

How scientists are perfecting chocolate

https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/food-environment/2026/how-scientists-are-perfecting-...
1•gmays•36m ago•0 comments

The Right Has Forgotten What Beauty Is For

https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/08/the-right-has-forgotten-what-beauty-is-for/
3•petethomas•37m ago•0 comments

> 150 Polymarket wallets may have traded on military secrets, research finds

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/more-than-150-polymarket-wallets-may-have-traded-militar...
2•petethomas•42m ago•0 comments