[andybak]

Yep. I wonder if we could memify this in an attempt to fight back: "Your f*ing blog is not an app" or something similar.

The complete abandonment of any form of progressive enhancement is depressing. We need to get some real metrics on user engagement (slow load over poor connections), SEO drawbacks (yes google can index this stuff but does it rank as well?) and accessibility (how well do screen readers really cope?).

Get some facts and start hitting people over the head with them.

[pluma]

You might want to look deeper into PWAs. Nothing about PWAs says you can't do server-side rendering. In fact, performance and offline support are major factors in development quality. Lighthouse (linked from the repo) checks for these things too.

[andybak]

Yes I suppose so - but to realistically get server-side rendering I'm currently forced to use javascript on the server as well as the client and that is not a price I'm prepared to play.

Hopefully that will change.

[pluma]

> forced to use javascript

Sounds like your gripe is less with client-side code than with JavaScript as a language.

We have a saying for that in my native language. It roughly translates as "All I hear is mimimi...".

[rhizome]

We need to get some real metrics on user engagement (slow load over poor connections), SEO drawbacks (yes google can index this stuff but does it rank as well?) and accessibility (how well do screen readers really cope?).

No company will ever publicize this data.

[andybak]

There's been research and data published in similar areas to all three of the suggestions I raise above. You don't need companies to do this kind of research themselves - although in some cases they do agree to publish data from studies they themselves commission.