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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.

I am not sure software engineering was ever what we thought it was

https://shippingbytes.com/2026/06/17/i-am-not-sure-software-engineering-was-ever-what-we-thought-...
1•speckx•27s ago•0 comments

Brain implant allows paralyzed man to control his computer

https://www.psypost.org/unprecedented-brain-implant-allows-paralyzed-man-to-completely-control-hi...
1•geox•1m ago•0 comments

Smart Clock – smart alarm clock with weather and sleep tracking

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.woxev.smartclock&hl=en_US
2•wdadad•2m ago•0 comments

Visual Studio Code 1.125

https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_125
2•tosh•2m ago•0 comments

Strands Shell: Give your agent a shell without giving it keys to your machine

https://github.com/strands-agents/shell
7•siegers•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A Free Crunchbase Alternative

https://startupwiki.tech/
2•shpran•5m ago•1 comments

CEO Letter: 2025-26 Intel Corporate Responsibility Report

https://newsroom.intel.com/corporate/ceo-letter-2025-26-intel-corporate-responsibility-report
1•ilreb•6m ago•0 comments

LLM benchmarks are answering someone else's question

https://danlevy.net/llm-evals-are-broken/
3•justsml•6m ago•0 comments

The Orange Pi 6 is a new SBC with 12-core CPU, 45 TOPS of AI power, 24GB RAM

https://www.hackster.io/news/the-new-orange-pi-6-is-way-more-powerful-than-your-current-sbc-42744...
1•mikalauskas•6m ago•0 comments

Phone-Thing, Self-Thing

https://mlsu.io/posts/phone-thing-self-thing/
1•mlsu•7m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Zkit – Go libraries for building agents, not a framework

https://zarldev.github.io/zarlmono/
2•zarldev•7m ago•0 comments

Why Porsche Added a Fake Gearbox to Its New $111,900 Electric Vehicle

https://www.inc.com/connor-jewiss/why-porsche-added-an-illusion-to-its-new-111900-electric-vehicl...
2•connorjewiss•7m ago•0 comments

We Liked Remote Work. and Then We Looked at Data

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/opinion/remote-work-depression.html
2•achow•7m ago•0 comments

ServiceNow Security Breach Exposes Enterprise Customer Data

https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/servicenow-security-breach-exposes-enterprise-customer...
1•mooreds•8m ago•0 comments

I built an AI crypto trading bot, then proved it had no edge

https://github.com/blitzcrieg1/sentinel-trader-research
1•blitzcrieg•8m ago•0 comments

The AI era is pulling FP64 hardware away from scientific HPC

https://fortran-lang.discourse.group/t/the-ai-era-is-pulling-fp64-hardware-away-from-scientific-h...
2•Bostonian•8m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Bacon – an ad network that pays developers while their Claude works

https://geturbacon.dev
1•mrc_ord•8m ago•0 comments

US holds off blacklisting DeepSeek and more than 100 firms deemed security risks

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-us-holds-off-blacklisting-000212827.html
1•theanonymousone•8m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How's your experience with the YC Cofounder Matching platform been?

1•mmarian•9m ago•0 comments

Death rate in ICE immigrant detention centers more than doubles under Trump

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/death-rate-ice-immigrant-detention-centers-more-than-dou...
2•tartoran•10m ago•0 comments

'Dangerous' AI Models Are Coming No Matter What

https://www.wired.com/story/dangerous-ai-models-are-coming-no-matter-what/
2•kordlessagain•11m ago•0 comments

Python dev saved from disaster by intuition and AI

https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/06/16/python-dev-saved-from-disaster-by-intuition-and-...
1•kens•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Smooth.video – animate your content, slide by slide, free

https://smooth.video/
1•elbazia•11m ago•0 comments

High degree of quantum entanglement detected in a metal crystal

https://www.techexplorist.com/high-degree-quantum-entanglement-detected-centimeter-sized-strange-...
2•SVI•12m ago•0 comments

Zero-Day 'RoguePlanet' in Microsoft Defender Grants System-Level Control

https://cyber.netsecops.io/articles/rogueplanet-zero-day-in-microsoft-defender-allows-full-system...
2•jaybode•13m ago•0 comments

Some Data Should Be Code

https://borretti.me/article/some-data-should-be-code
1•tosh•14m ago•0 comments

Data Visualization from the Comfort of Your Terminal

https://github.com/medialab/xan/blob/master/docs/cookbook/dataviz.md
3•Yomguithereal•14m ago•0 comments

The Doom Trolling Needs to Stop

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/opinion/ai-dangerous-openai-anthropic.html
1•kordlessagain•14m ago•0 comments

"You Killed the Car"

https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/june-july-2026/inside-ferris-buellers-iconic-ferrari-...
1•speckx•15m ago•0 comments

Trump and world leaders joined by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google at G7

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/17/g7-trump-ai-tech-leaders-openai-anthropic-google.html
2•kordlessagain•15m ago•0 comments