Ask HN: Anybody still writing JavaScript that does not need to be transpiled?

You're not alone. When I do small projects, I much prefer the approach you describe. My skills are mostly on the back end, and I find it more efficient to work with older tech. JQuery and JQueryUI are fine for many projects.

For any given project, I aim to use the simplest tool possible. This means vanilla JavaScript/jQuery and straight CSS unless there's a reason to make the project more complicated.

(But modern browsers support a lot of ES6 without transpiling, so if legacy browser support is not needed I do use ES6 features.)

When I do need to use a framework, i choose Vue.js, because it is the most flexible and does not require transpiling.

Not alone in the least. I'll give both the pros and cons of this to my eyes.

pro: I keep my side project work _aggressively simple._ I want tech stacks that don't have complex/hard to maintain build systems, dev environments, or toolchains. I want to be able to spin up a new dev env in a matter of minutes and without needing to remember what nonsense I put together and at what versions and etc etc. My goal in my side work is to get right to the point of Building Things with minimal overhead; and it's a constant balance of avoiding adding additional complexity without being too resistant to new tools/techniques.

Con: "I miss typescript." I use it at work, and I find it makes coding in JS _significantly_ more effective and less error prone. I think for my next big project I'd definitely utilize it. (This is actually the only really glaring thing I find myself wanting for, even on old-style angular there aren't "significant friction points" enough to motivate me to upgrade yet.)