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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.

Operation Raven: Browser based Call of Duty like game

https://semperplay.com/games/operation-raven/
1•semperMade•2m ago•0 comments

Will major-party U.S. presidential candidate deploy AI clone to talk to voters?

https://manifold.markets/BrunoClawfeld/will-a-majorparty-us-presidential-c
2•bcaulfield•8m ago•2 comments

How Hurricanes Form: A Visual Explainer

https://simstorm.net/basics/how-do-hurricanes-form
1•1659447091•8m ago•0 comments

Nuclear Fission Fuels is Inexhaustible (2022)

https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/nuclear-fission-fuel-is-inexhaustible/1257
1•andsoitis•10m ago•1 comments

Starcraft: Ashfall

https://starcraft-shooter-2026.pages.dev/
1•debo_•11m ago•0 comments

Creation/Evolution - Creationist Software Development (1993)

https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_108.html
1•andsoitis•19m ago•0 comments

Dogs seem to agree with humans that 'kiki' is round and 'bouba' is spiky

1•johnnyApplePRNG•19m ago•0 comments

Through the Looking Glass

https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_69.html
1•andsoitis•21m ago•0 comments

Anthropic's Own Staff Can't Use Claude Code's 'Bypass Permissions' Mode

https://runtimewire.com/article/anthropic-s-own-staff-can-t-use-claude-code-s-bypass-permissions-...
2•runtimewire•26m ago•1 comments

The San Andreas Fault is tearing this winery apart

https://geotripper.blogspot.com/2011/11/hey-its-not-my-fault-its-san-andreas.html
1•pastureofplenty•27m ago•1 comments

A Whole-Cortex Encoding Model of Vision, and Language for In-Silico Neuroscience

https://huggingface.co/ffh92r32rm0/Cajal-1
2•hamiltonf•31m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Local-first macOS video recorder and editor with MCP support

https://github.com/TriHerm/cutmark
1•abishai33•37m ago•0 comments

AI Optimism Globally Widespread Despite Uneven Use

https://news.gallup.com/poll/714593/optimism-globally-widespread-despite-uneven.aspx
2•gmays•38m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: What are the best open models for computer use?

2•akchro•40m ago•0 comments

Cohere Transcribe hits 1.46% WER clean, 2.5x worse than claimed on real audio

https://inferencebench.io/blog/cohere-transcribe-03-2026-benchmark
1•wondersky•41m ago•0 comments

Reliable web access for AI agents and automation workflows

https://ninatechllc.com/
1•cyzanfar•43m ago•1 comments

Don't filter your email based on AI detection

https://blog.keyvan.net/p/dont-filter-your-email-based-on-ai
1•k1m•44m ago•1 comments

Richard Feynman: Can Machines Think? (1985) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipRvjS7q1DI
3•embedding-shape•45m ago•0 comments

'Der Viener Schlinger': The meat cannon that launched 20k hot dogs

https://flatwaterfreepress.org/der-viener-schlinger-the-meat-cannon-that-launched-20000-hot-dogs/
1•NaOH•46m ago•0 comments

Share passwords securely with your team

https://expirenote.com/
1•rafaelktinoco•47m ago•0 comments

Zero Breach

https://github.com/interplains/zero-breach
1•k_sze•47m ago•0 comments

Rbit – fast, self hosted Git in a single Rust binary

https://github.com/GitRbit/rbit
2•GitRbit•49m ago•0 comments

ES3D – An SVG like file format for 3D scenes – Extensible Scalable 3D

https://es3d.org/
1•bitilia•49m ago•1 comments

Rusteerio: 4x faster Rust port of Cheerio

https://www.context.dev/blog/introducing-context-highlights
2•npmipg•55m ago•0 comments

FBI Busts North Korean "Laptop Farms" (CBS)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7oTB-7Y8dM
2•khalidkhair•56m ago•0 comments

How are you measuring your agent's memory layer?

https://www.memstrata.dev/
1•yadu989•57m ago•0 comments

Sanity's Edge – A voice BBS from 1994

https://sanitys-edge.shouden.us
2•indigodaddy•59m ago•0 comments

Warp for Desktop and Cloudflare for Teams

https://blog.cloudflare.com/warp-for-desktop/
2•rhuziashleeweju•1h ago•1 comments

Sagebrush and Pyodide, Measured

https://sagebrush.space/articles/performance/01-sagebrush-and-pyodide
1•mathgenius•1h ago•0 comments

Halo N64

https://github.com/JackTulli/halo-64/tree/main
1•black6•1h ago•0 comments