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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.

Why do Macs ask you to press random keys when connecting a new keyboard?

https://unsung.aresluna.org/why-do-macs-ask-you-to-press-random-keys-when-connecting-a-new-keyboard/
4•zdw•1m ago•0 comments

An Analysis of 8K Polling Rates

https://www.igorslab.de/en/latencies-and-marketing-why-in-the-end-only-end-to-end-matters-and-why...
1•takoid•2m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Topo maps and Meshtastic mesh networking in MGRS navigator

https://redgridtactical.com/mgrs
1•redgridtactical•2m ago•0 comments

JitAPI – An MCP server for dynamic tool discovery (34x fewer tokens)

https://github.com/nk3750/jitapi
1•peaknk•3m ago•0 comments

Everything Wrong with Material 3 Expressive (2025)

https://xylight.dev/posts/everything-wrong-with-m3e
2•Velocifyer•5m ago•0 comments

The last human profession will be

https://hundredmondays.substack.com/p/the-last-human-profession-will-be
1•capnchaos•5m ago•0 comments

Nixcache-oci: Use GHCR as a Nix binary cache

https://github.com/cmspam/nixcache-oci
1•n8henrie•6m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea

https://mentwire.com/sample
2•nowflux•6m ago•0 comments

'Treasure trove' of antiviral proteins could inspire powerful molecular tools

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01011-y
2•prabal97•6m ago•0 comments

I am thinking of open sourcing my medical information as an LLM wiki – advice?

2•kranke155•7m ago•0 comments

The 20-Year-Old Chess Prodigy Laying Waste to the Top Grandmasters

https://www.wsj.com/sports/javokhir-sindarov-candidates-tournament-chess-9a50a66a
1•tortilla•7m ago•0 comments

I Built a Functional Cognitive Engine

https://github.com/youngbryan97/aura
1•bryanyoung97•9m ago•0 comments

Launch HN: Freestyle: Sandboxes for AI Coding Agents

https://www.freestyle.sh
2•benswerd•10m ago•0 comments

Tell HN: Google bot suspended our startup's email with 0 human recourse

2•FounderLindsay•10m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Pg_kazsearch – Full-text search for Kazakh in PostgreSQL

https://github.com/darkhanakh/pg-kazsearch
2•darkhanakh•11m ago•1 comments

Sum Ergo Demonstro

https://linusakesson.net/scene/sum-ergo-demonstro/index.php
2•adunk•13m ago•0 comments

No KYC Casino and Cold Wallet: The Ultimate Anonymous Gambling Setup 2026

https://playonstake.eu/blog/no-kyc-casino-cold-wallet-the-ultimate-anonymous-gambling-setup-2026
1•onedah•14m ago•0 comments

Artemis II, Apollo 8, and Apollo 13

https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2026/04/02/artemis-apollo/
2•ibobev•14m ago•0 comments

Hyperbolic Version of Napier's Mnemonic

https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2026/04/02/hyperbolic-napier-mnemonic/
1•ibobev•15m ago•0 comments

We built a unified API for EHR integrations

https://www.usecobalt.com/
1•bryanmillstein•15m ago•0 comments

Play Is Winding Down

https://createwithplay.com/play-update-2
1•edude03•17m ago•1 comments

Top Level System – A modular C microkernel with 50 hot-loadable modules

https://github.com/garacil/TopLevelSystem
2•tecnoxarxa•17m ago•1 comments

You're measuring code coverage wrong

https://getotterwise.com/blog/you-are-measuring-code-coverage-wrong
2•lasserafn•18m ago•0 comments

Jeevanyatra – The Human Lifecycle as a 7-State Finite State Machine

https://prachi.onslate.in/
1•buddhahastha•18m ago•0 comments

Show HN: GovAuctions lets you browse government auctions at once

https://www.govauctions.app/
2•player_piano•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: NfcGuard – Block distracting apps with NFC tags

https://github.com/Andebugulin/nfcGuard
1•Andebugulin•21m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Orchestrating AI into reviewable PRs you can reason about

https://github.com/ninthwave-sh/ninthwave
1•roblambell•22m ago•0 comments

A NAS appliance built on bcachefs

https://github.com/nasty-project/nasty
2•khajdamowicz•24m ago•1 comments

US-Iranian War: a best case scenario

https://kamilkazani.substack.com/p/us-iranian-war-a-best-case-scenario
3•enaaem•24m ago•0 comments

Molecule in Python blood could pave way for new obesity drugs, scientists say

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/mar/19/molecule-python-blood-metabolism-obesity-weight-l...
2•PaulHoule•26m ago•0 comments