The benefits, I can see.
JS frameworks move really quickly, and when we're working on a large, long-term project, it sucks when big breaking changes are introduced after only a couple of years. Sticking to slow-moving web standards (which are quite mature by now) increases the longevity of a project.
And the stability also means that more time is spent on delivering features, rather than on fixing compatibility issues.
There is also the benefit of independence. The project's success is not tied to the framework's success. And it also makes the project more secure, from supply chain attacks and such.
Because there is no "abstraction layer" of a framework, you also have greater control over your project, and can make performance optimizations at a lower level.
I feel not using a framework can even make us a better developer. Because we know more of what's going on.
But this alternative of using none... it seems rarely talked about. I want to learn more about building large (preferably web-based) software projects with few dependencies.
Do you have any suggestions on how to learn more about it? Are there any open source projects you know which are built this way? It needs to be large, complex, app-like, and browser based. I'm more interested in the frontend side.
Thank you!
There is a stereotype from the outside world that a great many programmers are autistic. The irrational fear of not using a framework for code in the browser is one of those cases that really screams the stereotype for all to see.
If you are using TypeScript there is inbuilt type checking for the DOM, because TypeScript ships with a very good data type library that describes the DOM in excellent detail.
It’s absolutely not and it absolutely doesn’t. Inheriting a VanillaJS project is often a nightmare because it screams “inexperienced developer” not to use a framework, so the code quality and build processes are often extremely low quality and undocumented.