Turbolinks: SPA-like Experience without the SPA-framework Hassle

Well, you can use data-turbolinks-permanent to prevent turbolinks from trashing a dom subtree, so that lightens it up a bit. Its also often paired with caching so that big chunks of the page are pulled from the cache so you can often do a sub 300ms refresh of the page with turbolinks while working well on slow mobile connections that choke on large js bundles.

It is complex in its own way though, so there's no free lunch here.

It’s the wrong question to ask. Frameworks exist so that devs can stand on the shoulders of wheel reinventors/optimisers, and perhaps more importantly debuggers. If you’re going to build an SPA, you may as well use a framework.

The question to ask is: should you build an SPA? Many complaints we as developers have, especially regarding browser history issues with SPAs, are issues that the end-user also experiences, but under the umbrella classification of “the website doesn’t work well.”

An SPA offers much in the way of developer ergonomics, but does it benefit the end-user? I’m inclined to think it doesn’t in many cases. Aside from the issue of downloading Javascript libraries, SPAs often make the user experience unnecessarily jarring when even simple things can seem to take longer because the browser is hanging while JS occupies the main thread — which, in the end, is at least on the same level as a full page refresh, in terms of user experience.

Of course, I’m no UX expert, but speaking from my own experience and the experience of some non-developers with whom I communicate, I have concluded that web applications which do the bulk of the work server-side and emit fully rendered HTML without the need for Javascript libraries etc. tend to offer preferable experiences for end-users.

Obviously React blurs the line a little with server-side rendering, but it's rare that you see a truly well-executed example in the wild. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't have a good sample size to make remotely objective conclusions.

All I know is that Github is a website that works very well (in my opinion) and its full page refreshes never bother me. Same goes for a handful of other websites (FreeAgent, an accounting platform, was also very nice to use when I was a freelancer). I just can’t shake my scepticism about SPAs as a result, despite the fact that working on them comprises my profession, my every day life.

It makes me miserable sometimes though, to feel dubious about the things I help build day after day, but I don't have the luxury of being able to just build what I want, I need money so I build what others want.

If you have some OCaml masters, why not slap together some BuckleScript to call an simple OCaml wrapper around the sql and call it a day?

That’s one of the reason I prefer libraries to franework and if at all possible core libraries get wrapped in access objects or delegates abd such - a library can be replaced if it gets discontinued or some issues arise down the road, a framework intwrtwine with your code too much and it’s a risky proposition for anything you plan to maintain for more than five years, i.e. devs who bet on angular.

Don’t get me wrong I like the react structure for example and I see the value in having the whole foundations laid out and a strict structure to follow and they seem stable enough for a project, but there’s no way to use it and still maintain control over your code, they become one and if anything happens it’s either a rewrite or one of the purported drop in replacement or you have to get in the code or provide a bug report and wait for a release... and all that is incompatible with enterprise softwares with a sla.

Sure. I build them all the time. It's dead simple as long as you keep it simple.

I'd argue that the bigger problem is knowing when you need an SPA. Every website thinks they need an SPA, even when they obviously don't. Your news site doesn't need to be an SPA, your document-sharing service doesn't need to be an SPA, your movie recommendation service doesn't need to be an SPA, etc.