[buchanaf]

Not the most compelling list of pros/cons that I have ever seen.

In terms of raw performance for content sites, I found hybrid implementations like Gatsby.js to beat most things. Most of the cons of SPAs can be significantly diminished with SSR, proper chunking, and a variety of other modern techniques -- it just gets complicated in a hurry.

[ryanworl]

For anyone reading this thread and thinking about server side rendering their single page app: do not go down that route unless you’re willing to also implement proper chunking! If you SSR your pages, but still need to load a giant bundle, you will get the worst of both worlds: a page that looks ready, but makes your users extremely frustrated because they can’t interact because your app isn’t booted yet.

[piranha]

What's chunking in this context?

[ryanworl]

Breaking down your JavaScript bundles into smaller files that contain the code necessary for the route you’re actually going to be viewing once the page is loaded. For other routes, you fetch the necessary code on-demand.

This lessens the CPU power and bandwidth needed to initially load the page.