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Ask HN: How does one build large front end apps without a framework like React?

94 points thepianodan | 1 comments | 17 Oct 25 10:50 UTC | HN request time: 0.221s | source

I had a mind-blown-moment when I learnt that Obsidian was built without any frontend JS framework. ( https://forum.obsidian.md/t/what-framework-did-the-developer-use-to-create-obsidian-desktop-application/30724/11 )

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.
There are benefits to using frameworks too, I'm not here to challenge that.

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!

1. ravenstine ◴[17 Oct 25 16:11 UTC] No.45618391[source]▶
You don't need a "framework". You don't even really need a rendering/state library like React, depending on what you're doing.

If you're having difficulty thinking outside of frameworks, I would suggest you work on a simple project where you don't use anything like Next.js or React. Start with the bare minimum of tools available to you through the browser API and your backend runtime of choice, then add things on as needed. Try implementing your own routing without using a third-party package dedicated to routing. Work on your own component system, state management, or even a rendering abstraction.

I can guarantee that, once you at least near completion on such a pet project, you'll not only have a better appreciation for what frameworks are doing but realize that they're actually quite overrated in a lot of ways. In reality, it's totally feasible to build an application, especially one for the web, with more of your own code and not having to think about it in terms of how your logic fits within a "framework".

At the end of the day, 99% of frameworks is someone else's opinion. This is I think what makes churn in the JS world painful. The majority of changes are based on a developer's opinion of how things should work, but their opinion isn't necessarily better than anyone else's. Your application is not worse because it doesn't use someone's idea of how an elegant state management system should behave. It's not worse because it's doing its own DOM manipulation rather than handing off all that work to an opaque rendering library. The point is to get the job done. You can make a kickass web application with freaking Backbone or jQuery if you wanted to.

It's not that I don't appreciate frameworks, though I do think it's important for programmers to learn how to move beyond them. Frameworks don't have as big a job as many are lead to believe. Their complexity is primarily arbitrary most of the time. It's not that such complexity can't be beneficial, but bypassing said complexity doesn't require a big brain.