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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.

Ask questions on the Claude Code codebase

https://app.sourcebot.dev/~/askgh/alex000kim/claude-code
2•msukkarieh•1m ago•0 comments

Software Pipelining for GPU Kernels: Part 1 – The Pipeline Problem

https://www.modular.com/blog/software-pipelining-for-gpu-kernels-part-1-the-pipeline-problem
1•MohamedMabrouk•1m ago•0 comments

Agent skills for desktop automation and video recording

https://github.com/TwillAI/skills
1•danoandco•2m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Amoxide – The right aliases, at the right time

https://amoxide.rs/
1•5422m4n•4m ago•0 comments

Kagi: April 1, 1996

https://kagi.com
3•surprisetalk•5m ago•0 comments

Reductio Ad Absurdum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
1•rdevilla•6m ago•0 comments

The Oil Crisis Is About to Get Physical

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-oil-crisis-is-about-to-get-physical
6•mooreds•6m ago•0 comments

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2•mooreds•7m ago•0 comments

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Prompt Engineering for Humans

https://michaelheap.com/prompt-engineering-for-humans/
2•mooreds•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: MCP server that generates macOS tools via Open Scripting Architecture

https://github.com/MayCXC/osa-mcp
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https://github.com/samahlstrom/forge-cli
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https://www.together.ai/blog/aurora
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Write Once, Run Anywhere (For Real This Time) – Why WASI Won't Get Us There

https://medium.com/low-level/write-once-run-anywhere-for-real-this-time-5573bf0471b7
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https://blog.nfsensei.org/about.html
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1•abzgupta•18m ago•0 comments

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2•wyamichelle•18m ago•1 comments

Israel passes law to give death penalty to Palestinians convicted lethal attacks

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/30/israel-passes-law-death-penalty-palestinian-convict...
5•0x54MUR41•20m ago•1 comments

Options for Preloading Images with JavaScript

https://macarthur.me/posts/preloading-images/
1•brandrick•22m ago•0 comments

Reviews for The Super Mario Galaxy film are what you'd expect

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1•brandrick•26m ago•0 comments

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https://shawkisukkar.substack.com/p/think
1•shawkisukkar•28m ago•1 comments

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https://willybrauner.com/journal/signal-the-push-pull-based-algorithm
1•brandrick•28m ago•0 comments

Born in the USA? China targeted in Trump's birthright citizenship fight

https://www.scmp.com/news/us/diplomacy/article/3348460/born-usa-china-targeted-americas-birthrigh...
3•KnuthIsGod•28m ago•0 comments

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1•jasonswett•29m ago•0 comments

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https://trydoorstep.app
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https://github.com/bakkot/structured-concurrency-for-js
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1•icyou780•32m ago•0 comments