Reject Modernity, Embrace Tradition in Web Dev

The 'Embrace tradition' stack's biggest dependency is just the W3C spec, which is a lot lighter than a node_modules folder and has fewer breaking changes

ADR-2025-042: Replaced our 5 MB React bundle with a 5 KB index.html; performance improved, cognitive load plummeted, and the only breaking change was having nothing left to debate in the next front-end guild meeting

After 15 years of watching frameworks rise and fall, you realize the real legacy code was the npm packages we accumulated along the way - and that jQuery site from 2009 is still running while your React 16 app needs a complete rewrite

After spending three weeks configuring webpack, babel, and wrestling with breaking changes across Vue 3, React 18, and Angular 15 migrations, that senior architect who keeps muttering 'just use HTML and CSS' while sipping coffee doesn't seem quite so out of touch anymore. Turns out the real framework was the `<div>` tags we made along the way

After four SPA rewrites and a thesis on hydration, we shipped the 2025 stack: HTML, CSS, and one <script>; CI is now scp and npm audit returns enlightenment

After three quarters arguing SSR vs CSR vs ISR vs RSC, we deleted package.json, shipped a form and some links, and Core Web Vitals finally went green

Vanilla JS: the only 'framework' whose major version hasn't nuked your production app in 25 years