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The Business Case for Vanilla JavaScript

https://lewiscampbell.tech/blog/250430.html
6•LAC-Tech•9mo ago

Comments

copypaper•9mo 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•9mo ago
What benefits of a framework?

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

proc0•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo 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•9mo 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.

5.25-inch floppy disks expected to help run San Francisco trains until 2030

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/5-25-inch-floppy-disks-expected-to-help-run-san-francisco...
1•austinallegro•1m ago•0 comments

'Smiling' fossil discovered on Holy Island

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7v0ev05mdjo
1•1659447091•1m ago•0 comments

How to Build Agents Users Can Trust

https://builders.ramp.com/post/how-to-build-agents-users-can-trust
1•gk1•1m ago•0 comments

The wonderful world of AI plugins

https://handyai.substack.com/p/the-wonderful-world-of-ai-plugins
1•jakehandy•2m ago•0 comments

Trump has prepared speech on extraterrestrial life, Lara Trump says

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5744218-trump-holds-alien-speech/
1•doener•2m ago•0 comments

Teleoperation of Dual-Arm Manipulators via VR Interfaces

https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/15/3/572
1•PaulHoule•2m ago•0 comments

Rubik's WOWCube adds complexity, possibility by reinventing the puzzle cube

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/02/rubiks-wowcube-adds-complexity-possibility-by-reinventing...
1•furcyd•4m ago•0 comments

The #1 most downloaded skill on OpenClaw marketplace was malware

https://twitter.com/chiefofautism/status/2024483631067021348
1•Umofomia•4m ago•0 comments

When "Efficiency" Means Admitting You Were Wrong

https://www.decodeecon.com/p/when-efficiency-means-admitting-you
1•NomNew•9m ago•0 comments

Render raises $100M at $1.5B valuation

https://render.com/blog/series-c-extension
2•crcastle•11m ago•0 comments

35

https://zero.fail/thirty-five/
1•ahmgeek•12m ago•0 comments

Why there's no quick fix in sight for the problem of dazzling headlights

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn71xyjpdl2o
1•holdit•12m ago•0 comments

HUD proposes rule that would force noncitizens from public housing

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2026/02/19/hud-public-housing-mixed-status-immigration/03...
4•geox•13m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Is Claude Code slow just for me today?

1•DhruvaBansal2k•16m ago•0 comments

Nate Friedman Exposed Italy's Migrant Crisis [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eV5Z9R7WG8
1•throwitaway222•17m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Kalpaka – A living tree that grows services from wishes

https://kalpaka.ai/
1•Kalpaka•18m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A 3D dashboard for OpenClaw agents, their tool calls in real time

https://github.com/talhaorak/divan
1•talhao•19m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Bosun – Supervising Agentic Fleet Manager (Open Source)

http://bosun.virtengine.com/
2•jaeko44•21m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Axon – Safely run claude --dangerously-skip-permissions on Kubernetes

https://github.com/axon-core/axon
1•gjkim042•21m ago•0 comments

Show HN: What the EU parliament and commission have been working on lately

https://euforya.eu/goals?ff_commission=true
1•krzysiek•21m ago•0 comments

The Psychology of Bad Code Part 3 – Vibe Coding

https://shehackspurple.ca/2026/02/16/the-psychology-of-bad-code-part-3-vibe-coding/
1•shehackspurple•25m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: How to require confirmation for git reset in Cursor after recent update?

1•theorchid•25m ago•0 comments

Silicon Valley Is Hoarding Technical PhDs

https://homeeconomics.substack.com/p/silicon-valley-is-hoarding-technical
1•aziz_sunderji•25m ago•1 comments

A relationship between the Collatz conjecture and the Fibonacci numbers

https://vincentrolfs.dev/blog/collatz
1•amichail•26m ago•0 comments

My Excellent Conversation with Joe Studwell

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/my-excellent-conversation-with-joe-stud...
2•paulpauper•26m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Zest – A single-container recipe manager built without front end tools

https://github.com/MartinSantosT/myzest
1•martin-mast1974•26m ago•1 comments

Plop – A lightweight generator framework for repeatable codebase patterns

https://plopjs.com
2•h4ch1•26m ago•1 comments

Record Low Crime Rates Are Real, Not Reporting Bias or Improved Medical Care

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/record-low-crime-rates-are-real-not
2•paulpauper•26m ago•0 comments

Computer Science as Infrastructure: The Spine of the Lean CSLib

https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.15078
2•matt_d•27m ago•0 comments

SBCL's official policy on LLM-assisted contributions

https://sourceforge.net/p/sbcl/mailman/message/59298416/
1•djha-skin•29m ago•0 comments