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You probably don't need a single-page app

journal.plausible.io

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Re: You probably don't need a single-page app

#381

Post by strken »

wokwokwok wrote: post #376
mnm1 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works. Now you only need double the engineers to create the same app as you would using a server side framework. Hardly a more powerful argument against SPAs than this.

Perhaps, but if both teams are half the size, specialised and deliver faster, it’s a win. That may not always be the case, but if your SSR team and API team are the same size, your devs suck, bluntly. API based backends are much easier to build, test, manage and look after.

That's a hell of a generalisation, and it falls down pretty fast when you move beyond CRUD apps. You can easily end up with entire teams whose role is just to babysit Elasticsearch.

Re: You probably don't need a single-page app

#382

Post by simooooo »

acemarke wrote: post #263
save_ferris wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree that a big part of this conversation falls on ensuring code quality is maintained over time, regardless of the architecture you choose. Fortunately, I inherited a set of pretty well-maintained SSR rails apps, and they've been pretty straightforward to continue working on (with a couple of exceptions). The single biggest disadvantage I see with front end apps is that comprehending state management v…

Hi, I'm a Redux maintainer. Any specific concerns that I can help with? You might want to check out our new Redux Starter Kit package. It includes utilities to simplify several common Redux use cases, including store setup, defining reducers, immutable update logic, and even creating entire "slices" of state at once: https://redux-starter-kit.js.org

Having to write immutably is very very hard to do without leaking. This (for me) negates all the great positives of redux.

Re: You probably don't need a single-page app

#383

Post by simooooo »

mehrdadn wrote: post #330
Fredej wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how Google has been banging on about "just a few milliseconds of extra loadtime and your bounce-rate increases!" while in Gmail it's like they think the product is so good, people should be willing to wait 10 seconds to view their _mail_. The reason I'm even reading this comment section is because I wanted something to do while waiting for Gmail to load.

If Gmail is taking 10 seconds to load it might be worth your time to consider a faster computer for your own sake. It can be like 3-4 seconds on a faster computer.

10 core overclocked 4.6-4.7 i9 CPU. 400Mbit ethernet connection. Gmail still takes 6+ seconds

Re: You probably don't need a single-page app

#384

Post by matchagaucho »

Toutou wrote: post #322
matchagaucho wrote: post #187

Counterpoint... how many times have you clicked on a Show More link and thought to yourself "No, no... please don't redirect me to another page". Progressive reveal patterns are expected by end users. It's just lazy for a programmer to assume old-world CRUD patterns with server-side render.

I can't see why the Show More content couldn't be rendered server-side, fetched with AJAX and plugged into the DOM with two lines of JS. SSR, no redirect nor refresh, progressive reveal af.

That pretty much describes SPA behavior.

The payload can be JSON or HTML... but the UX should not redirect.

Re: You probably don't need a single-page app

#385

Post by movedx »

oblib wrote: post #234
save_ferris wrote: post #26

This. So much this. My company (4,500+ people) ordered all products in their portfolio (~12 web apps) to migrate to SPA front ends about a year ago as a way to stand out from our competitors, and boy has it been painful. Prior to that initiative, we had been using the hybrid approach mentioned in this piece, embedding SPAs only where necessary and sticking to SSR everywhere else, which worked really well. Since the a…

Wow... that is just insane. I've been working alone for so long I've not had to deal with anything like that for years, but I'll offer this... Doesn't matter, so don't let it matter to you. When I worked for others I'd offer my opinion and advice and when it was ignored I'd do it their way every step of the way because it really does not matter. You get paid the same either way. I'll add that because it didn't matter…

Yes. This... yes.

All you can do as a professional, with experience, is offer up an argument and attempt to make it convincing enough to compel people to do things your way. If they reject your option, defend only once, and no more. After that, simply step back and work with whatever technologies are decided upon.

You can also attempt to work the social networking game and play (internal) politics. If you do these successfully you're more likely to get your ideas heard and implemented. I find this tiresome.

Ultimately if I'm being polite, professional and basing my arguments on facts and evidence, and they're being rejected, I'm not expelling any more energy on this front. Move on. Work on and with what's decided and have fun doing it.

Re: You probably don't need a single-page app

#386

Post by Const-me »

kyledrake wrote: post #67

Agree with the article. I find server views to be substantially easier to work with. But more importantly, I also find server view rendering to be a faster, better UI experience. It's really frustrating having to wait several seconds for a SPA to load, or to have unexpected behavior when clicking the browser back button, or failing completely because some random hunk of JS garbage errored out, and it's one of the big…

SPAs are especially bad on mobile.

When browser receives HTML, either complete pages or updated fragments of them, it only needs to parse HTML, style/layout, and render. These steps are relatively fast, especially rendering (usually GPU does that).

When browser received JSON or XML instead, it needs to do all that as well (parsing is slightly simpler), but also it needs to make visual elements out of the data. Takes a lot of processing and therefore electricity: JavaScript is not particularly fast, the code size is often not insignificant i.e. takes time to download and parse the code, and the runtime is essentially single threaded (for any given page).

Re: You probably don't need a single-page app

#387

Post by mehrdadn »

krferriter wrote: post #378
mehrdadn wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Gmail is taking 10 seconds to load it might be worth your time to consider a faster computer for your own sake. It can be like 3-4 seconds on a faster computer.

Nah, just tested and mail.google.com took 23.3 seconds to load in Chrome and 30.2 seconds in Firefox. I have a 4-core 8-thread i7 and am on a 20Mbps internet line. It's the website, it isn't my computer.

Can you try in Guest Mode (or Incognito but only if you've disabled extensions in it)? I'm guessing you either have (1) battery power or other cause of downclocking, (2) slow extensions, (3) disabled/small cache, (4) an old CPU (old gen i7 maybe?), or (5) a large distance between you and the server. I have a similar machine to yours that's 3+ GHz and it's consistently loading in less than 4 seconds when I'm on AC.

(To be clear, I'm not excusing how slow their code is, just trying to help you save some time in the long run.)

Re: You probably don't need a single-page app

#388

Post by movedx »

insulanian wrote: post #303
save_ferris wrote: post #26

This. So much this. My company (4,500+ people) ordered all products in their portfolio (~12 web apps) to migrate to SPA front ends about a year ago as a way to stand out from our competitors, and boy has it been painful. Prior to that initiative, we had been using the hybrid approach mentioned in this piece, embedding SPAs only where necessary and sticking to SSR everywhere else, which worked really well. Since the a…

Well, in our case moving from server side MVC to SPA approach has drastically increased productivity and stability of our applications. MVC approach was a hairball of code where 2/3 was dealing with synchronization of state between client and server, and only 1/3 being related to actual application logic. Clean separation of frontend SPA and backend API made both sides simpler and more robust. I would also wholeheart…

> Well, in our case moving from server side MVC to SPA approach has drastically increased productivity and stability of our applications.

It sound as though the application was a suitable candidate for an SPA and should have been developed as one to begin with?

Re: You probably don't need a single-page app

#389

Post by movedx »

lmilcin wrote: post #157

All that complaining serves no purpose. SPA is just another tool in a belt. Where I think it shines is making rich apps that need complex flow and communication. This is where productivity is important and the process is complex and up until recently I would be advocating native desktop app. Now with advent frameworks that help me organize this very efficiently (I use re-frame/reagent with ClojureScript) I can create…

> All that complaining serves no purpose.

It's not complaining. It's a profession's view on the state of (default) behaviour by most developers in the wild. It's a valid set of points as to what the default mode of operation seems to be, as a general rule, and why it might not always be the correct default mode of operation.

Re: You probably don't need a single-page app

#390

Post by movedx »

tills13 wrote: post #365
paultopia wrote: post #262

Unpopular opinion: I love SPAs for simple stuff. Yes, they're a ton of work. But the feel of them is unparalleled. I have my personal home page written as a Vue SPA. It was a silly amount of work to get together, and not everything works perfectly. BUT: it moves like a rocket. I pre-render the simple front page, so initial load is nearly instantaneous (especially with cloudflare &c), and, by the time a visitor finish…

The more you write SPAs, the easier it is to set up the next one... This whole "but SPAs are bad!" tirade a lot of people have been going on since a couple years ago stinks of people being nervous about their job security.

https://martinfowler.com/bliki/MonolithFirst.html -- you're right, Martin Fowler, that guy no one has heard of, is just nervous his job is on the line.

No.

It's a perfectly valid point to make: splitting everything up into SPAs, micro services, etc, instead of solving the business problem with a monolith is indeed the wrong way to go, and Martin makes some sensible arguments around this topic.

It's the same in video games: you create a prototype using cubes and texture-less blobs to test the "business logic" (mechanics) first before you produce a AAA model and 700 animations.

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