Why I chose Vanilla JS over React for my startup — and why I'd do it again

Every developer I know told me to use Next.js.
I didn't. Here's why.
When I started building XEdge I had one constraint above everything else — I needed to be able to read, debug, and ship every single line of code myself. No build step failures at 2AM. No hydration errors I don't understand. No bundle size fights.
Vanilla JS gave me that.
Zero build step — push to GitHub, live in 2 minutes.
No framework opinions — the architecture is exactly what I decided it should be.
Full debuggability — every bug is findable because every line is readable.
The tradeoff: complex UI state gets messy fast. If I were building a dashboard-heavy app I'd reconsider. For a content and discovery platform it's been the right call every single day.
500 users. $0 infrastructure cost. One 18 year old maintaining the whole thing.
Sometimes the boring choice is the right choice.
xedge.tech