frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

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.

Codex for Sales Teams: Moving Faster to Solve Customer Problems [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2C55LC0ZLM
1•phyzix5761•48s ago•0 comments

BenchEvolver: Frontier Task Synthesis via Solution-Centric Evolution

https://benchevolver.github.io/
1•matt_d•2m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Alternative to WebXR, TypeScript SDK for multi-user VR app development

https://github.com/adamas-vr/runtime-interface
1•zekailin00•3m ago•0 comments

Discrete Tilt Matching

https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.18739
1•PaulHoule•3m ago•0 comments

Upvote if you'd like the VSCode devcontainers extension open sourced

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-remote-release/issues/11664
1•wallzero•3m ago•0 comments

Investment leaders share views on AI job displacement as next big risk (2021)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-12/what-do-wall-street-leaders-think-is-the-next-...
1•thoughtpeddler•5m ago•1 comments

Dnsfs. Store your files in others DNS resolver caches

https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/dns-filesystem-true-cloud-storage-dnsfs
1•882542F3884314B•6m ago•0 comments

Games Between Programs: The Ruliology of Competition

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2026/06/games-between-programs-the-ruliology-of-competition/
1•andromaton•6m ago•0 comments

SillyTavern: LLM Front End for Power Users

https://sillytavern.app/
1•doener•7m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Simple attributes for spec-driven agentic workflows (C#, Rust)

https://github.com/doublecouponday/gherkinsync
1•dcdgo•8m ago•0 comments

A Brief History of Reviewing Things on the Internet, Vol. I

https://catandgirl.com/a-brief-history-of-reviewing-things-on-the-internet-vol-i/
2•CharlesW•9m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Knowledge Access for Agents?

1•tmaly•15m ago•0 comments

Safsaf – A Web Framework for Guile

https://www.cbaines.net/posts/safsaf_a_guile_web_framework/
1•DASD•15m ago•0 comments

OpenRouter: The Unified Interface for LLMs

https://openrouter.ai
1•doener•15m ago•0 comments

Tell HN: AI software development workflow, stack-ranked from HN discussion

https://codeberg.org/jro/Knowledge/src/branch/main/2026-06-05_ai-development-workflow-tools.md
1•dv35z•16m ago•1 comments

Ex-CIA official accused of stashing $40M in gold bars is 'master manipulator'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjwpw8w6dnwo
1•tartoran•16m ago•0 comments

(There are) Only 20 JavaScript runtimes left

https://www.adamsolove.com/js/2024/03/13/javascript-runtimes.html
2•SpyCoder77•17m ago•0 comments

Hey Facebook: I can prove I am me. If you let me

https://zenodo.org/records/20542603
1•wylieeden•17m ago•2 comments

Accident: Lufthansa B789 nose gear collapse at gate in Frankfurt

https://avherald.com/h?article=53a14f7c
2•gurjeet•18m ago•1 comments

ML Bible

https://www.arjunvirk.com/writing/ml-guide
1•jdkee•19m ago•0 comments

Prusiking Up a Rope [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKOZDe0J4bI
1•soupspaces•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Omni – Local-first multimodal file search on macOS

https://hanxiao.io/omni/
1•artex_xh•21m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I nerfed our coding agents on purpose

10•noahfradin•23m ago•7 comments

Gen Z more disconnected and distrustful of coworkers than their older colleagues

https://fortune.com/2026/06/04/gen-z-more-disconnected-distrustful-of-coworkers-than-older-collea...
2•rustoo•24m ago•1 comments

My returns have been exponential – no, seriously

https://www.ft.com/content/127f11bc-e29a-4a2a-ba33-b729b39b838a
1•petethomas•27m ago•1 comments

The perils of UUID primary keys in SQLite

https://andersmurphy.com/2026/06/05/the-perils-of-uuid-primary-keys-in-sqlite.html
4•emschwartz•29m ago•2 comments

HiTracio

https://www.hitracio.com
2•wiratata•29m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Private in-browser VNC client with CF Workers

https://vnc2go.odinglynn.com
2•odig•30m ago•0 comments

Subtitles in VLC (VLsub via OpenSubtitles) no longer works

https://old.reddit.com/r/VLC/comments/1tub3ci/comment/opo61wu/
1•workfromspace•31m ago•1 comments

Designing a Better Podcast Editor

https://www.adamsolove.com/ui/ducking/2026/06/03/better-podcast-ui.html
1•SpyCoder77•34m ago•0 comments