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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.

Why tech is now obsessed with 'taste'

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/why-tech-bros-are-now-obsessed-with-taste
1•ilamont•39s ago•0 comments

EuroStack

https://eurostack.eu/
1•amai•55s ago•0 comments

Bernie vs. Claude [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3AtWdeu_G0
1•Jupe•1m ago•0 comments

The Responsibility of Intellectuals (1967)

https://chomsky.info/19670223/
1•caaqil•1m ago•0 comments

Cacti Defy Darwin

https://nautil.us/how-cacti-defy-darwin-1279117
1•Brajeshwar•2m ago•0 comments

Mayor of Paris removed parking spaces, "drastically" reduced the number of cars

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/21/travel/paris-transformation-anne-hidalgo-mayor
2•heresie-dabord•4m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Why do we train AI on one-on-one dialogues instead of group dynamics?

2•kubiknubika•8m ago•2 comments

Are AI Agents like von Hammerstein's industrious and stupid?

2•multidude•8m ago•1 comments

Why the Spec-to-Code Gap Cannot Be Closed?

https://www.causalitylimited.com/p/why-the-spec-to-code-gap-cannot-be
1•causalityltd•8m ago•0 comments

No Pills or Needles, Just Paper: How Deadly Drugs Are Changing

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/21/world/deadly-drugs-paper.html
1•Physkal•10m ago•0 comments

Agentic pre-commit hook with OpenCode Go SDK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j_Oh525Xrs
1•der_gopher•12m ago•0 comments

Reevaluating 1990s OOP in Java: DOP, Scoped Values, and Structured Concurrency

https://blog.arkstack.dev/en/blog/reevaluating-1990s-oop-in-java/
1•arkstack•13m ago•0 comments

A Simulated Dinosaur Nest Revealed Prehistoric Parenting Strategies

https://nautil.us/how-a-simulated-dinosaur-nest-revealed-prehistoric-parenting-strategies-1279134
1•Brajeshwar•15m ago•0 comments

Music and song discovery made simple

https://www.secondtrack.co/feed
1•eriatarka•21m ago•1 comments

Show HN: A minimal SVG polygon shape creator in the web

https://svg.koljasam.com/
1•blackbrokkoli•22m ago•0 comments

Healing and the Church

https://deepcode.substack.com/p/the-coming-great-transition-healing
3•longitudinal93•22m ago•0 comments

DFS and BFS Graph Searching Algorithms Explained

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIbUeeksXcI
1•Brysonbw•22m ago•0 comments

Nvidia is expanding its empire

https://www.economist.com/business/2026/03/17/nvidia-is-expanding-its-empire
2•andsoitis•24m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Looq, a Quick Look Extension for Markdown, Code, CSV, SQLite, and More

https://parcse.com/looq
1•sitxh•24m ago•0 comments

Iran's Strike Attempt on Diego Garcia Reveals Missile Range

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-21/iran-s-failed-diego-garcia-strike-is-show-of-m...
1•geox•26m ago•0 comments

The Trillion Dollar Race to Automate Our Entire Lives

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/claude-code-cursor-codex-vibe-coding-52750531
1•bookofjoe•27m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Why isn't the NSA categorized as an APT?

2•TheOpenSourcer•28m ago•0 comments

The biggest medieval march in English history never happened

https://www.popsci.com/science/battle-of-hastings-march-wrong/
1•Brajeshwar•29m ago•0 comments

Context Anchoring

https://martinfowler.com/articles/reduce-friction-ai/context-anchoring.html
1•reg_dunlop•32m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Cap the spending of your agents

https://github.com/day50-dev/capit/
1•kristopolous•33m ago•0 comments

Interactive NEXRAD point cloud 3D visualization

https://github.com/dcgrigsby/nexrad
1•cyril-crutches•33m ago•0 comments

Design systems aren't for designers anymore, they're for agents

https://vibeflow.ai/blog/ai-doesnt-have-bad-taste-you-have-no-system/
3•alepeak•35m ago•0 comments

Autonomous AI research agent with Overleaf sync

https://github.com/nanoAgentTeam/research-claw
2•nanoAgentTeam•36m ago•1 comments

Unix philosophy is dead Long live something else?

https://sdomi.pl/weblog/27-manifesto-of-a-burnt-out-hacker/
2•tempodox•37m ago•1 comments

Is playing music good for the brain?

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/03/20/is-playing-music-good-for-the-brain
3•andsoitis•39m ago•1 comments