311–320 of 516 posts
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Gmail takes 3s to load. And HN is a website, not an app.
How is HN not an app? All the content is user generated. Everything is interactive. What's the difference?
Lots of pushback here in the comments. But I can't think of the last time I enjoyed using a SPA website over a multi-page one. The initial loading feels delayed, the page scrolling feels unnatural and jarring (completely opposite of how a native app feels). Also, one of my banks recently changed their old website to a new SPA one. And it is now completely useless. It can't load information in time, so most of the for…
The toupee fallacy strikes again here. Gmail, slack[0], Netflix and Spotify are top tier examples - they actually work. Most are true garbage though. [0] I am firmly on the slack-performance-is-a-disgrace train, but their web client is a great example of a well done SPA - it’s miles better than the app other than notifications.
Just a few days ago I had to get an OTP via email and it was completely frustrating. No indication nothing, just a loading circle. The old MPA version was much better.
It's worth noting that the Speculation Rules API and the View Transition API are not stable in Firefox and therefore aren't supported by all major browser.
yeah, if it's not in firefox it doesn't count. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1823896 also mobile safari so basically all iphones.
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This article is full of misrepresentations and lazy takes. The author has had other anti-JS polemics widely upvoted on HN, which were just as carelessly written. But people upvote it anyway. What is the cause of this? 1. Bad experiences with JavaScript apps that have aggregated complexity (be it essential or incidental complexity)? 2. Non-JS developers mystified and irritated at a bunch of practices they've never rea…
You miss the whole point and the author is correct about this: Modern CSS is powerful, and HTML is the way to deliver web content. Every web framework is _literally_ a hack to make the web something it isn’t. People who haven’t seen the evolution often pick up the bad habits as best practice. For thise JavaScript people, I recommend trying Laravel or Ruby/Rails. And then once you realize that JavaScript sucks you’ll…
What I find interesting though is the assumption that web dev is done by "JavaScript people", that even the best "JavaScript people" have no technical breadth, and therefore fester in a cesspool of bad ideas, unlike your median backend dev who swims in the azure lakes of programming wisdom.
Now, I've done plenty of SPAs, but I've also done plenty of other things (distributed systems, WebVR apps, metaprogramming tools, DSLs, CLIs, STB software, mobile apps, a smidgeon of embedded and hobbyist PSOne games). Which gives me the benefit of a generalist perspective.
One thing I have observed is that in each silo, there are certain programmers who assume they are the only sane group in the industry. They aren't interested in what problems the other siloes are solving and they assume any solution "over there" they don't understand is bad / decadent / crazy.
These groups all regard each other with contempt, even though they are largely addressing similar fundamental issues in different guises.
It's a social dynamic as much as any technical one.
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This article is full of misrepresentations and lazy takes. The author has had other anti-JS polemics widely upvoted on HN, which were just as carelessly written. But people upvote it anyway. What is the cause of this? 1. Bad experiences with JavaScript apps that have aggregated complexity (be it essential or incidental complexity)? 2. Non-JS developers mystified and irritated at a bunch of practices they've never rea…
You miss the whole point and the author is correct about this: Modern CSS is powerful, and HTML is the way to deliver web content. Every web framework is _literally_ a hack to make the web something it isn’t. People who haven’t seen the evolution often pick up the bad habits as best practice. For thise JavaScript people, I recommend trying Laravel or Ruby/Rails. And then once you realize that JavaScript sucks you’ll…
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> Startups and SV jerk each other off by promoting each other (think affiliates). None of it means shit. No, this is FB ceding the battle. They absolutely didn't want this. They dropped CRA because social media celebrities were shitting on CRA. Dan Abramov had to do a complete 180 in a single day, after writing a long thoughtful essay in defense of CRA.
Wars, battles, personalities on social media… I don’t want to sound too much like a grouchy old man but these frameworks are tools. Nothing more than that. I can’t understand why anyone would become emotionally invested in any of them. When starting a project the right move to examine what best fits your project, not which one was recently victorious in a war. I’ve grown to dislike React because I see it being abused…
I think that's simple: because they are financially invested in them. That's obvious for the developers working on the frameworks themselves or building libraries / plugins / UI-themes for them, but I believe it's also correct for "normal" developers who build things with these frameworks.
They know these frameworks and can use them, and they've made an investment in time to get to that point. Likely they're also making at least some of their money _because_ they know these frameworks. Emotional attachment follows the economic attachment, and then you'll get plenty of rationalizations.
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This article is full of misrepresentations and lazy takes. The author has had other anti-JS polemics widely upvoted on HN, which were just as carelessly written. But people upvote it anyway. What is the cause of this? 1. Bad experiences with JavaScript apps that have aggregated complexity (be it essential or incidental complexity)? 2. Non-JS developers mystified and irritated at a bunch of practices they've never rea…
You miss the whole point and the author is correct about this: Modern CSS is powerful, and HTML is the way to deliver web content. Every web framework is _literally_ a hack to make the web something it isn’t. People who haven’t seen the evolution often pick up the bad habits as best practice. For thise JavaScript people, I recommend trying Laravel or Ruby/Rails. And then once you realize that JavaScript sucks you’ll…
It's an entirely different concept. It's certainly not the right technology for a news site, but days ago in a different place, there was for example the discussion about how an SPA and minimalistic API services fit a lot better with your average embedded device.
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> ...if you shared that misunderstanding of SPAs and used them to solve the wrong problem, this article is 100% correct. Agreed. The article was a frustrating read. The author is an SEO consultant. SEO consultants likely have a heavy focus on marketing websites. Actual apps and not marketing websites do benefit significantly from SPA. Imagine building Google Maps without SPA. You can animate page transitions all you…
to be fair to both points: he has a really warped view that SPAs are somehow purely about routing. he does correctly point out that a lot of sites could and should be treated as sites not apps.
It's a reimagination of ye Olde three tier approach. Perfect for apps.
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Performance, developer experience, user experience
Developer experience - Yes, in most cases. Performance - No, in most cases. User experience - No, in most cases. What are you talking about. Majority of SPAs have abysmal performance compared to regular HTML rendered websites and that reflects poorly on user experiences.
I think if people remembered how productive you could be before the SPA frontend/backend split they'd reconsider. Being able to take a feature from A to Z without either context-switching between ecosystems or, even worse, involving other people, was incredibly productive and satisfying. Not to mention a much more streamlined dev env without a bloated js ecosystem of bundlers/compilers and whatnot.