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

94 points thepianodan | 4 comments | 17 Oct 25 10:50 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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!

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Octoth0rpe ◴[17 Oct 25 11:10 UTC] No.45615334[source]▶
> JS frameworks move really quickly

React is a lot more stable than I think you're giving it credit for.

> And the stability also means that more time is spent on delivering features

Frameworks/libs also exist to save you time, thus letting you spend more time on delivering features. And fwiw, the obsidian team seems to agree in principle. Your link goes to a forum post of some kind, in which one may find a link to obsidian's third party deps: https://help.obsidian.md/credits#Third+party+acknowledgement...

These do not include React, but do include:

- i18next - lezer - moment.js

Plus a bunch of others. Why didn't obsidian write their own date lib and chose to use moment.js? Because it saved them time, despite the fact that moment.js does make changes, and many people are moving on from it in any case.

The idea that not using a frontend framework will let you focus on delivering features seems reductive, and the obsidian anecdote doesn't support the idea anyway.

Whatever you're building, it's never a bad idea to deeply understand the tradeoffs that using a library will bring. Obsidian probably couldn't accept the downsides of React due to them needing a bunch of custom renderers for content, which React makes harder. But that is likely a rare constraint for apps in general.

Generally speaking, libs like react exist to save you time and help you focus on delivering features.

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actinium226 ◴[17 Oct 25 15:25 UTC] No.45617852[source]▶
> React is a lot more stable than I think you're giving it credit for.

Hooks are only 5 years old. The docs were revamped 2 years ago and there's lots of dead links to the old docs page which has a scary warning "These docs are old and won’t be updated." Create-react-app was deprecated in February of this year and in their blog post they tell you to use frameworks like Next.js.

And then there's the ecosystem. Next.js introduced app router 3 years ago and lots of docs for libraries still assume you're using pages router. Remix is now react router v7, and I have no idea what's going on with all this Tanstack stuff. There's a new typescript compiler called "Speedy Web Compiler" which just came out in April and as a result Vite now has 4 options for creating a new React project: react, react-ts, react-swc, react-swc-ts

Meanwhile moment.js has had 5 releases in the last 4 years. 3 of them in 2022 and 2 in 2023.

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1. mind-blight ◴[17 Oct 25 16:18 UTC] No.45618483[source]▶
I'm gonna be honest, I've been developing with react for about 9 years across a lot of projects and companies. I've never used next.

Maybe I'm out of touch, but I don't understand why people think it's so tightly could with the ecosystem

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2. Octoth0rpe ◴[17 Oct 25 16:34 UTC] No.45618697[source]▶
There is a large amount of what _might_ be described as astroturfing on the part of vercel to push Next. More charitably, vercel/the next community publishes a very large number of good tutorials/boilerplates/etc that are built on top of next.js.
3. sralbert ◴[17 Oct 25 19:46 UTC] No.45621193[source]▶
If you check the docs for how to create a react app the first thing they recommend is to use next.js.
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4. mind-blight ◴[17 Oct 25 20:18 UTC] No.45621546[source]▶
Oh interesting - I haven't been on their starting page in years. I'm surprised getting started with vite isn't higher up. That takes 5 minutes and doesn't require a full framework.

That said, starting with react router or expo is probably the right call depending on the project needs. Routing is not something you want to do yourself, and react native is pretty unfriendly without expo