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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.

Ask HN: When will ChatGPT Voice be able to control my phone?

1•spapas82•9m ago•0 comments

A daily estimation game where the crowd's answer fights an AI

1•holdthelineworl•10m ago•0 comments

The time filter in Google Search broke a few days ago

https://mastodon.online/@mwichary/117023736804129342
1•latexr•10m ago•0 comments

AGI Singer: Buddy, I Need an AGI Handover Framework

https://medium.com/@miho999lv/agi-singer-buddy-i-need-an-agi-handover-framework-7253cafb220e
1•miho999lv•14m ago•0 comments

EU Icons for labelling AI-generated content – Shaping Europe's digital future

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-icons-labelling-ai-generated-content
2•robert-boehnke•20m ago•0 comments

Belladonna of Sadness (1973)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071203
2•aljgz•23m ago•1 comments

Tesla Spyware

https://ma.tt/2026/07/tesla-spyware/
2•ms7892•23m ago•0 comments

Don't replicate data over webhooks. SCROLL

https://welidev.github.io/scroll/
1•weli•23m ago•1 comments

POV: An AI replaced your job this morning [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k35i0o-b8sI
1•Animats•29m ago•1 comments

The Claude Code plugin marketplace has no price field

https://www.promptreceipts.com/blog/claude-code-plugin-marketplace-no-price-2026
1•pwsj•30m ago•0 comments

What Happens When Frustrated Machines Talk to Each Other?

https://medium.com/towards-artificial-intelligence/what-happens-when-frustrated-machines-talk-to-...
1•dexmac221•31m ago•0 comments

Running a 35B LLM at 128K Context, Full Speed, on €870 of Used Hardware

https://medium.com/ai-advances/running-a-35b-llm-at-128k-context-full-speed-on-870-of-used-hardwa...
1•dexmac221•32m ago•0 comments

Adima AI: The Future of AI Enhancement

https://www.aiimageupscale.com/ai-image-upscaler-pc
1•JuekMorningstar•33m ago•0 comments

Every new UK home should have air conditioning, say Liberal Democrats

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/26/every-new-home-should-have-air-conditioning-s...
1•edward•34m ago•1 comments

Ginger hair portraits show unexpected 'golden thread' connecting Americans

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce97nyz4rvmo
1•mellosouls•34m ago•0 comments

The Apple Network Server's all-too-secret weapon (featuring PPC Toolbox)

http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-apple-network-servers-all-too.html
1•rbanffy•38m ago•0 comments

MCP and A2A are not solving one crucial challenge in the post-AGI world – Trust

https://github.com/mindify-ai/VACT-P
1•markchennext-al•49m ago•0 comments

Multiplayer AI Infrastructure

https://github.com/Abloatai/docs
2•luckymonkybaby•51m ago•0 comments

Apple struggles to keep pace with AI 'bug' hunters

https://www.ft.com/content/4532122d-90f2-4433-9df6-ca99d8a141d2
2•sbulaev•52m ago•0 comments

Koalas are the only non-primates with fingerprints

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/koala-fingerprints/?hl=en-US
1•noduerme•54m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Aevros .... A kernel that explains itself

https://github.com/Mobeen0119/Aevros
1•Mobeen0119•56m ago•0 comments

The Great Attack: Survivors' Tales

https://athena.westpoint.edu/items/0b0a7046-90f8-48ef-8b73-429b6536cbd4
1•AFF87•57m ago•0 comments

Cyberscript

https://cyberscript.dev
3•dtj1123•1h ago•0 comments

How to search documents we can't read – Confer Blog

https://confer.to/blog/2026/08/private-ai-document-search/
1•DavideNL•1h ago•0 comments

Nerd culture is murdering intellectuals

https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/nerd-culture-is-murdering-intellectuals
16•mockerell•1h ago•20 comments

Show HN: I built a personal CRM that lives inside Apple's Contacts app

https://www.persodex.com
2•poolie•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: TamedTable, AI ETL in Natural Language

https://www.tamedtable.com/
2•ZeljkoS•1h ago•3 comments

A deep dive into Nvidia's Vera CPU and the Olympus cores that power it

https://www.theregister.com/systems/2026/08/01/nvidias-vera-cpu-and-the-olympus-cores-that-power-...
1•u1hcw9nx•1h ago•0 comments

What if we learned languages like we acquired our first?

3•Salim_wariz•1h ago•4 comments

Mathematics Without Mathematicians

https://borretti.me/article/mathematics-without-mathematicians
5•varjag•1h ago•0 comments