It's interesting how we've reached a point where 'vanilla' is seen as an obscure domain of knowledge. The 'gravity' of frameworks like React is so strong that for many new developers, the framework IS the web. Breaking out of that mindset often reveals that the browser has actually evolved quite a bit and can handle a lot of what we used to reach for libraries for, especially with Web Components and CSS Grid/Flexbox being so mature now.

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whstl 2 days ago | parent [-]

I like to criticize React as much as the next person, but this is an JS ecosystem problem around third-party libraries, not a React problem per se.

If you're using third-party NPM packages to do "Vanilla", you're will probably run into the same problem.

If you import React directly from a CDN, you won't.

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algolint 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Agreed, it's an ecosystem-wide challenge. But React's dominance effectively cemented the 'build step as default' paradigm. When an entire generation of developers learns to `npm install` before understanding the DOM, the penalty for third-party drift gets baked into the architecture early. Delivering raw ES modules over a CDN structurally forces a lighter dependency footprint and pushes complexity to the edges.

	▲	whstl 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, I agree. Build systems (especially Babel and Webpack) were the first big culprits in terms of dependency bloat, and it was very rare to see React without them.

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algolint 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

on the other hand, AI assisted coding may open avenue, when developers choose native over framework