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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.

"Pac-Man" enzyme breaks down bioplastics and penicillin in laboratory tests

https://phys.org/news/2026-09-pac-enzyme-bioplastics-penicillin-laboratory.html
1•mdp2021•3m ago•0 comments

Goroutine Leak Profiles

https://go.dev/blog/goroutine-leak-profiles
2•ingve•6m ago•0 comments

Maybe We Shouldn't Be Reviewing All This Code

https://martinfowler.com/rachels-ramblings/code-review.html
2•ingve•9m ago•0 comments

Launch HN: RonanRX (YC S26) – Personalized Peptides and GLP-1s

https://ronanrx.com/
4•lloydarmbrust•9m ago•2 comments

Acer's DualPlay Mini concept is both gaming handheld and mini-laptop

https://liliputing.com/acers-dualplay-mini-concept-is-both-a-gaming-handheld-and-a-mini-laptop/
2•spankibalt•11m ago•0 comments

Booz Allen Cyber Weapon Index

https://www.boozallen.com/insights/cyber/cyber-weapon-index.html
1•pseudolus•11m ago•0 comments

SDK-free, simple, email-based login/auth provider

1•ameeting•13m ago•0 comments

Lacuna, cryptic protein pocket discovery that runs on a laptop CPU

https://github.com/mooreneural/lacuna
1•ramen0w0•15m ago•0 comments

British Pet Massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_pet_massacre
2•georgecmu•16m ago•0 comments

With Gemini 3.8 Flash, Google reminds everyone it's still in the race

https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/09/02/with-gemini-38-flash-google-reminds-everyone-its...
1•joebuckwilliams•17m ago•0 comments

Kimi Launches IPO Before Market Stops Pricing Dreams

https://chinaonchina.com/article/kimi-launches-ipo-before-market-stops-pricing-dreams
2•try-working•17m ago•0 comments

Hermes CEO Suddenly Takes Interest in China's Pork Prices?

https://chinaonchina.com/article/hermes-ceo-suddenly-interested-in-china-s-pork-prices
1•try-working•18m ago•0 comments

US Government worried that AI companies can't innovate without legal theft

https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/09/02/us-government-worried-that-ai-companies-cant-innovate-...
3•tabith•22m ago•0 comments

NASA delays Crew-13 launch after leak found on SpaceX Dragon

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260901010705.htm
1•bookmtn•23m ago•0 comments

You're Not in the Loop Anymore. You're Running the Loops

https://www.kevinold.com/blog/running-the-loops
1•kevinold•23m ago•3 comments

Snowflake Q2 2027 earnings report

https://investors.snowflake.com/financials/quarterly-results/default.aspx
2•kklisura•25m ago•0 comments

Pushing UberDDR3 Frequency Through RTL Cleanup

https://www.openiphub.com/post/pushing-uberddr3-frequency-through-rtl-cleanup-post-18
1•peter_d_sherman•26m ago•0 comments

Traverse – [Horizontal] OPML Outliner for macOS

https://apps.shakingthehabitual.com/traverse/
1•treetalker•26m ago•1 comments

Bridging Models' Internal States

https://mostik.ai/read-more
1•ashvardanian•27m ago•0 comments

CHC5: Open Camera System – Image Sensor Specification Comparison

https://www.circuitvalley.com/2026/08/chc5-open-camera-sensor-comparison-specification.html
1•devoxel•28m ago•1 comments

Show HN: PuPPT – slide renderer and inline editor for PPT/PPTX (Golang/no deps)

https://github.com/artpar/puppt
1•artpar•29m ago•0 comments

On the Loose

https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/on-the-loose
1•jdkee•32m ago•0 comments

US judge blocks Trump's newest order limiting birthright citizenship

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-judge-wont-immediately-block-trumps-newest-order-limiting-birthr...
3•tartoran•32m ago•0 comments

US charges two former Linqto CEOs over $450M 'pre-IPO' fraud scheme

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-charges-two-former-linqto-ceos-over-450-million-pre-i...
3•tartoran•34m ago•0 comments

She backed body positivity. He's a scientist. Both are on GLP-1s

https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/article/glp1-jabs-body-positivity-matter-of-fa...
2•paulpauper•35m ago•0 comments

Inference-only expert boost saves 8.5% reasoning tokens in Qwen 35B MoE

https://zenodo.org/records/22255483
2•ConteMascetti71•35m ago•0 comments

Google Engineer Accused of Polymarket Insider Trading Says He Was Just Gambling

https://www.wired.com/story/google-engineer-accused-of-polymarket-insider-trading-says-he-was-jus...
2•paulpauper•36m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How to get taken seriously while using AI?

2•askHN2026•37m ago•1 comments

Ex-White House teleprompter operator ordered pay $172,000 for Trump speech bets

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gj2dl4x52o
2•paulpauper•37m ago•0 comments

The holy grail of nixpkgs: version ranges

https://fzakaria.com/2026/09/01/the-holy-grail-of-nixpkgs-version-ranges
3•domenkozar•39m ago•0 comments