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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: 0.201s | 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. gwbas1c ◴[17 Oct 25 16:16 UTC] No.45618456[source]▶
IMO: It's good to know how to manipulate the DOM directly. Any complicated web app will always hit some kind of corner case where you need to bypass your framework and manipulate an element. For example, the spinner that you see on https://manage.onopti.com/ is disabled with a pure DOM call once WASM + Blazor is started up.

That being said, as many other comments rightly point out, (for most projects,) if you work directly in the DOM you'll end up recreating what most frameworks do for you. It's really only "worth it" when you can strongly justify it: IE, if you're making a charting library that can handle thousands of datapoints, or a rich degree of interactivity that a usual business web site doesn't have.

But for a typical interactive website: Use whatever framework your peers at your company will be comfortable with.