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The Business Case for Vanilla JavaScript

https://lewiscampbell.tech/blog/250430.html
6•LAC-Tech•8mo ago

Comments

copypaper•8mo 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•8mo ago
What benefits of a framework?

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

proc0•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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.

Pigeon's Nuclear Dogshit Vaporiser

http://pigeonsnest.co.uk/stuff/nuclear-dogshit-vaporiser.html
1•joebig•6m ago•0 comments

An Ice-Covered Russian Ghost Town

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2021/03/photos-ice-covered-russian-ghost-town/618188/
2•samgilb•8m ago•0 comments

gRPC Streaming: Real-Time Communication That Works

https://skoredin.pro/blog/golang/grpc-streaming-golang
1•ibobev•12m ago•0 comments

Effectiveness vs. Collateral Damage in Italy's Piracy Shield

https://labs.ripe.net/author/antonio-prado/live-event-blocking-at-scale-effectiveness-vs-collater...
1•alberto-m•13m ago•0 comments

"Scholars Will Call It Nonsense" the Structure of Erich von Däniken's Argument

https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/scholars-will-call-it-nonsense/
2•Kaibeezy•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Isolated benchmarks to avoid optimization pollution (Node.js)

https://github.com/Llorx/iso-bench
1•Llorx•14m ago•0 comments

Stop Slop

https://github.com/hardikpandya/stop-slop
1•handfuloflight•15m ago•1 comments

Cuckoo Hashing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo_hashing
1•tosh•16m ago•0 comments

Open-source iCloud Photos Downloader (AKA escape from iCloud)

https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_downloader
1•reconnecting•16m ago•1 comments

Scientists map the human genome in 4D

https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2025/12/scientists-map-the-human-genome-in-4d
2•airstrike•17m ago•0 comments

$RALPH – The crypto coin from the creator of the "Ralph Wiggum" AI methodology

https://ralphcoin.org/
1•da_grift_shift•18m ago•0 comments

David Long's 751-point Adventure has been found

https://quuxplusone.github.io/blog/2025/12/29/long0751/
5•homarp•19m ago•1 comments

Erich von Däniken – 14.04.1935 – 10.01.2026

https://daniken.com/en/startseite-english/
2•Kaibeezy•22m ago•0 comments

The First Relhic? Cloud-9 Is a Starless Gas Cloud

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu:443/abs/2025ApJ...993L..55A/abstract
1•taubek•22m ago•0 comments

Always Already Betas

https://disjunctionsmag.com/articles/always-already-betas/
1•sorushn•22m ago•0 comments

Exe.dev, Modern VMs

https://blog.exe.dev/meet-exe.dev
1•handfuloflight•27m ago•0 comments

China, 2004: Every 02 minutes, 9 Chinese attempt to take their lives and 8 die

http://www.china.org.cn/english/Life/114068.htm
2•joebig•28m ago•1 comments

Turn off annoying progress messages in Claude Code?

https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/6814
1•jv22222•29m ago•0 comments

The Most Powerful Man in Science

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/01/rfk-jr-public-health-science/684948/
1•syracusian•31m ago•0 comments

Show HN: DocGenie – Static documentation generator without subscriptions

https://github.com/NishantHustler/docgenie
2•fair_products•32m ago•0 comments

The Boring Work That Makes AI Useful

https://deadneurons.substack.com/p/the-boring-work-that-makes-ai-actually
1•nr378•32m ago•0 comments

Anthropic: Developing a Claude Code competitor using Claude Code is banned

https://twitter.com/SIGKITTEN/status/2009697031422652461
11•behnamoh•33m ago•1 comments

Cray Customer Service – Memories (1979 to 2014) by Charles Clark

https://cray-history.net/2021/11/04/cray-customer-service-by-charles-clark/
1•stmw•36m ago•0 comments

Four more tech bloggers are switching to Linux

https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/01/10/2231218/four-more-tech-bloggers-are-switching-to-linux
4•MilnerRoute•38m ago•0 comments

AgentLint – Static security scanner for AI agent configurations

https://github.com/akz4ol/agentlint
1•akz4ol•38m ago•0 comments

Own a Graph

https://staysaasy.com/strategy/2025/11/25/own-a-graph.html
1•thisismytest•39m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I shipped my cofounder platform today based on actual work

https://www.cofounder-hunt.com
2•PEGEBE•39m ago•0 comments

The Move Faster Manifesto

http://brianguthrie.com/p/the-move-faster-manifesto/
1•gpi•39m ago•0 comments

Samsung Galaxy S26 launch date rumored

1•AhmadKhattak•41m ago•0 comments

M8SBC-486 (Homebrew 486 computer)

https://maniek86.xyz/projects/m8sbc_486.php
2•rasz•42m ago•0 comments