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The Business Case for Vanilla JavaScript

https://lewiscampbell.tech/blog/250430.html
6•LAC-Tech•10mo ago

Comments

copypaper•10mo 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•10mo ago
What benefits of a framework?

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

proc0•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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•10mo 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.

To Hunt the Wild Hat

https://medium.com/luminasticity/to-hunt-the-wild-hat-e73721b3f12b
1•bryanrasmussen•19s ago•0 comments

Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses (2013)

https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-addresses/
1•smagin•2m ago•1 comments

Prompt-caching – auto-injects Anthropic cache breakpoints (90% token savings)

https://prompt-caching.ai/
2•ermis•3m ago•1 comments

I'm a project manager, to the engineers: how replaceable do you think my job is?

1•ferociousmadman•4m ago•0 comments

Parametricity, or Comptime Is Bonkers

https://noelwelsh.com/posts/comptime-is-bonkers/
1•birdculture•5m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Bonsai – A tiny sandboxed expression engine for TypeScript

https://danfry1.github.io/bonsai-js/
1•danfry•5m ago•0 comments

Evolving our real-time timeseries storage again: Built in Rust (2025)

https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/engineering/rust-timeseries-engine/
1•l2dy•6m ago•0 comments

Western AI models "fail spectacularly" in farms abroad

https://restofworld.org/2026/ai-agriculture-local-data/
2•HR01•6m ago•0 comments

Elusive Cost Savings of Pre-fabricated homes

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/the-elusive-cost-savings-of-the-prefabricated
1•HR01•9m ago•0 comments

Why yes, you *can* agentically code wherever you SSH

https://ivoras.substack.com/p/why-yes-you-can-agentically-code
1•taubek•9m ago•0 comments

Social media is an ant mill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J_obzqM5K0
1•frag•9m ago•0 comments

If you can't trust AI with a credit card, just give it a prepaid card

https://agentcard.sh/
1•haebom•10m ago•1 comments

The Road Runner Economy

https://nraford7.github.io/road-runner-economy/
1•markusw•11m ago•0 comments

Researchers have demonstrated magnetic particle imaging on humans

https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/news-and-events/news/detail/news/mpi-humans/
1•giuliomagnifico•11m ago•0 comments

Iran Drone War Ode Model

https://policytensor.substack.com/p/why-the-us-is-facing-strategic-defeat
1•harperlee•14m ago•1 comments

My Claude Code Setup

https://freek.dev/3026-my-claude-code-setup
1•speckx•14m ago•1 comments

Show HN: RAG Doctor – CLI tool to diagnose broken RAG pipelines

https://ragdoctor.dev/
1•anvarxadja•16m ago•1 comments

Web Rewind

https://www.web-rewind.com/
1•thunderbong•16m ago•0 comments

Microsoft Hasn't Had a Coherent GUI Strategy Since Petzold

https://www.jsnover.com/blog/2026/03/13/microsoft-hasnt-had-a-coherent-gui-strategy-since-petzold/
2•mpweiher•18m ago•0 comments

From Run Nation to Power Slap: New Sports Designed for Social Media

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/mar/13/run-nation-power-slap-carjitsu-tgl-golf-typti-sport...
1•yk•19m ago•1 comments

Stanag 5516M-STD-6016 TADIL-J J-Series schema reconstruction from public docs

https://liotier.github.io/Ersatz-MIL-STD-6016/
1•liotier•20m ago•0 comments

Want to Win a New CanaKit Raspberry Pi 5 Starter Kit Pro?

1•pgedge_postgres•22m ago•0 comments

Prompt engineering vs. context engineering: a practical guide for AI builders

https://memgraph.com/blog/prompt-engineering-vs-context-engineering
1•taubek•22m ago•0 comments

Solder Ninja Pen: USB-powered soldering iron compatible with Weller RT tips

https://www.crowdsupply.com/sitron-labs/solder-ninja-pen
2•oxplot•30m ago•0 comments

OSS Document Scanner

https://www.akylas.fr/OSS-DocumentScanner/
1•farfromrefuge•32m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Line, Language with Intuitive and Natural Expression

https://github.com/Qc-17/LINE
1•Qc17•33m ago•1 comments

40 Years of Wireless Evolution Leads to a Smart, Sensing Network

https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom-history-1g-to-6g
2•canarymark•34m ago•0 comments

Analysis → Implementation → Reflection – a practical technique for agentic AI

https://blog.scottlogic.com/2026/03/05/analysis-implementation-reflection-practical-techniques.html
1•ColinEberhardt•35m ago•0 comments

Phoenix Arizona is likely to see its earliest 100f(38c) day on record, in March

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/12/weather/record-heat-west-eastern-cold-whiplash
3•b33f•36m ago•0 comments

Automating the Ticket-to-PR Cycle for Power Platform Code Apps with Azure DevOps

https://agent22.sh/blog/automating-power-platform-code-app-development-with-agent22/
1•cubixle•36m ago•0 comments