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The Business Case for Vanilla JavaScript

https://lewiscampbell.tech/blog/250430.html
6•LAC-Tech•11mo ago

Comments

copypaper•11mo 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•11mo ago
What benefits of a framework?

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

proc0•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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.

50 Years of Thinking Different

https://www.apple.com/50-years-of-thinking-different/
1•reconnecting•1m ago•0 comments

Zero Ambient Authority: The Principle That Should Govern Every AI Agent

https://grith.ai/blog/zero-ambient-authority-ai-agents
1•edf13•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Data Hogo – scan your repo for security issues

https://www.datahogo.com/en
1•efecto1920•2m ago•0 comments

Germany considers ramping up coal power to avert energy crisis

https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-considers-ramping-up-coal-power-to-avert-energy-crisis/
1•leonidasrup•3m ago•0 comments

Nested Simulation and Nested Intelligence: A Pessimistic Thought

https://lizeng614.github.io/posts/when-reality-feels-structured/?lang=en
1•LeoisNotAI•3m ago•0 comments

My side project was annihilated by Google

1•lilouartz•3m ago•0 comments

Railway (web app host) "accidentally enables CDN" causing massive data breaches

https://station.railway.com/questions/data-getting-cached-or-something-e82cb4cc
1•hihicoderhi•5m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Hacker News comments summary to telegram

https://github.com/juanpabloaj/hacker-news-summary
1•juanpabloaj•5m ago•0 comments

72% of the dollar's purchasing power was destroyed in just four episodes

https://eco3min.fr/en/us-inflation-is-not-linear/
1•latentframe•5m ago•0 comments

Same LLM, Different Agent: What Changes When You Specialize for CI

https://www.mendral.com/blog/same-llm-different-agent
1•shad42•6m ago•0 comments

Facial Recognition Is Spreading Everywhere

https://spectrum.ieee.org/facial-recognition-gone-wrong
2•Brajeshwar•8m ago•0 comments

$270k sales in just 23 days

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/270-000-sales-in-just-23-days-e8736524b7
1•mhmanik02•8m ago•0 comments

Mr. Chatterbox is a (weak) Victorian-era ethically trained model

https://simonwillison.net/2026/Mar/30/mr-chatterbox/
1•simonw•8m ago•1 comments

Apple Pivots Its AI Strategy to App Store, Search-Like Platform Approach

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-03-29/apple-doubles-down-on-hardware-services-wit...
1•tantalor•8m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Aurora Borealis

https://awsforidiots.com
1•heythisischris•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Building a GPT from scratch: What I learned and why it mattered

https://twitter.com/pirosb3/status/2038374502992585175
1•pirosb3•10m ago•0 comments

In Case of Emergency, Make Burrito Bison 3

https://juicybeast.com/2017/08/03/in-case-of-emergency-make-burrito-bison-3/
1•amarcheschi•10m ago•0 comments

PicoUnits: Lightweight units and DSL for scientific Python

https://github.com/wgbowley/PicoUnits
1•wgbowley•11m ago•0 comments

IHP Haskell Framework v1.5 has been released

https://github.com/digitallyinduced/ihp/releases/tag/v1.5.0
2•_query•12m ago•0 comments

The loss of OnePlus in the US will sting but, sadly, won't matter

https://9to5google.com/2026/03/29/oneplus-us-wont-matter/
2•neogodless•13m ago•0 comments

A Look at Some Retro Desktop Graphical User Interfaces

https://www.goto10retro.com/p/a-look-at-some-retro-desktop-graphical
1•adunk•14m ago•0 comments

Best practices for improving supply chain visibility in road freight (2023)

https://www.sennder.com/blog/improving-supply-chain-visibility-in-road-freight
1•mooreds•15m ago•0 comments

TarPit.pro – honeypot that catches and auto-bans attackers

https://tarpit.pro/
1•chka•16m ago•1 comments

Inside the 'self-driving' lab revolution

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00974-2
1•salkahfi•16m ago•0 comments

Why Every AI Scores Below 1% on ARC-AGI-3: A Structural Explanation

https://medium.com/@dlugli76/why-every-ai-scores-below-1-on-arc-agi-3-a-structural-explanation-c5...
1•Dailui•17m ago•0 comments

Claude and Taxes

https://simonsafar.com/2026/claude_and_taxes/
2•speckx•17m ago•0 comments

The hypercurious mind: How ADHD may have helped humans thrive

https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-hypercuriosity-of-adhd-may-have-helped-humans-thrive
1•dinosor•17m ago•0 comments

Understanding Is About Constraints

https://thepatrickglenn.substack.com/p/understanding-is-about-constraints
1•pwmglenn•18m ago•0 comments

What Happens When You Tell AI Agents the Rules but Don't Enforce Them

https://github.com/liuhaotian2024-prog/ystar-bridge-labs
1•zippolyon•19m ago•0 comments

2027 Chevy Corvette Grand Sport: New LS6 and Z06 Aero

https://www.thedrive.com/news/2027-chevy-corvette-grand-sport-the-goldilocks-spec-returns-with-ne...
2•PaulHoule•22m ago•0 comments