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•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.

Episteme: A New System for Science

https://episteme.com/
1•momeara•1m ago•0 comments

Comparative Overview of EU-US Vehicle Standards

https://etsc.eu/comparative-overview-eu-us-vehicle-standards/
4•throw0101c•7m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Giselle – open-source visual editor for building AI workflows

https://github.com/giselles-ai/giselle
1•codenote•9m ago•0 comments

Don't call yourself a programmer, and other career advice (2011)

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/
1•teleforce•10m ago•1 comments

Five myths about learning a new language – busted

https://theconversation.com/five-myths-about-learning-a-new-language-busted-266946
2•zeristor•11m ago•0 comments

Miniray – A WGSL Minifier

https://hugodaniel.com/posts/miniray/
1•todsacerdoti•12m ago•0 comments

MongoDB Server Security Update, December 2025

https://www.mongodb.com/company/blog/news/mongodb-server-security-update-december-2025
2•plorkyeran•15m ago•0 comments

The Manus Debate and Why Some Bubbly AI Moonshots Aren't Bubbles

https://substack.com/inbox/post/182749582
1•theno0b•19m ago•1 comments

Show HN: DynamicHorizon – Dynamic Island for macOS

https://www.dynamichorizon.app
2•DHDEV•33m ago•0 comments

The Second Great Error Model Convergence

https://matklad.github.io/2025/12/29/second-error-model-convergence.html
1•kartikarti•35m ago•0 comments

Hyaluronic Acid in Topical Applications: Hero Molecule in the Cosmetics Industry

https://www.mdpi.com/2218-273X/15/12/1656
2•PaulHoule•37m ago•0 comments

Robots Are Hard – Revisiting the original Roomba and its simple architecture

https://robotsinplainenglish.com/e/2025-12-27-roomba.html
3•ArmageddonIt•40m ago•0 comments

Capital in the 22nd Century

https://philiptrammell.substack.com/p/capital-in-the-22nd-century
2•jger15•42m ago•0 comments

Will Skyrocketing Silver Prices Make Photo Film More Expensive?

https://petapixel.com/2025/12/29/will-skyrocketing-silver-prices-make-photo-film-even-more-expens...
1•geox•42m ago•0 comments

Show HN: J_PyDB – tiny encrypted file-based Python DB

https://github.com/NovaDev404/J_PyDB
1•SuperGamer474•47m ago•1 comments

Stranger Things Creator Says Turn Off "Garbage" Settings

https://screenrant.com/stranger-things-creator-turn-off-settings-premiere/
4•1970-01-01•48m ago•0 comments

Bye Bye Big Tech: How I Migrated to an Almost All-EU Stack (and Saved 500€/Year)

https://www.zeitgeistofbytes.com/p/bye-bye-big-tech-how-i-migrated-to
1•alexcos•49m ago•0 comments

Yae – Powerful yet Minimal Nix Dependency Manager

https://github.com/Fuwn/yae
1•MrJulia•51m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Notion-like private Markdown pages on Nostr

https://pages.formstr.app
1•abhsag24•54m ago•0 comments

A Timelapse of Satellite Launches: 1957–2025 [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ7O2gigebQ
3•animal_spirits•1h ago•1 comments

Manus Acquired by Meta

https://twitter.com/ManusAI/status/2005766053813707003
3•obiefernandez•1h ago•1 comments

With the rise of AI, web crawlers are suddenly controversial

https://www.theverge.com/24067997/robots-txt-ai-text-file-web-crawlers-spiders
2•thunderbong•1h ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How do you manage kids' accounts?

5•xfax•1h ago•1 comments

Parsing Advances

https://matklad.github.io/2025/12/28/parsing-advances.html
17•birdculture•1h ago•0 comments

Art, Money, and AI

https://hughhowey.com/art-money-and-ai/
2•herbertl•1h ago•1 comments

Good technology blogs: a reading list for the holidays

https://clickhouse.com/blog/tech-blogs
2•samaysharma•1h ago•0 comments

SoftBank to buy data center investor DigitalBridge for $4B

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/softbank-to-buy-data-center-investor-digitalbridge-for...
2•Gelob•1h ago•1 comments

Show HN: SafeVibe, a collaborative database to fix security gaps in vibe coding

https://safevibee.vercel.app/
1•tomdesantis•1h ago•0 comments

Lesson Learned: The Silent Danger of Hydration Fallbacks

https://mohammedeabdelaziz.github.io/articles/lesson-learned-form-security
1•mohammede•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: A privacy-first bulk image compressor and HEIC converter in the browser

https://zip.easynote.cc/
1•h2bomb•1h ago•2 comments