[ChrisMarshallNY]

This is a really good article. It’s not my bailiwick, but it must be extremely useful for folks that work in this space.

> When someone’s standing in front of a potential buyer trying to look professional, a slow-loading app isn’t just an annoyance. It’s a liability.

I liked reading that. It’s actually surprising how few developers think that way.

> Mobile is the web

That’s why.

I know many people that don’t own a computer, at all, but have large, expensive phones. This means that I can’t count on a large PC display, but I also can reasonably expect a decent-sized smaller screen.

I’ve learned to make sure that my apps and sites work well on high-quality small screens (which is different from working on really small screens).

The main caveat, is the quality of the network connection. I find that I need to work OK, if the connection is dicey.

[theK]

> When someone’s standing in front of a potential buyer trying to look professional, a slow-loading app isn’t just an annoyance. It’s a liability.

I've been there myself as a Dev and later on as a manager. You have to really watch out not getting locked into local minima here. In most cases its not bundle size that wins this but engineering an app that can gracefully work offline, either by having the user manually pre-load data or by falling back to good caches.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

> good caches

Some of the most challenging code that I write, is about caches.

Writing good cache support is hard.

[theK]

I think writing good cache support _can_ be very, very hard.

But in cases as grandparent describes, you do have significant wiggle room.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I write native apps (see "not my bailiwick," above).

It's fairly difficult, for me. The app can do a lot, but sometimes, the data needs to be fresh. Making the decision to run an update can be difficult.

Also, I write free software, for nonprofits, so the hosting can sometimes be a bit dodgy.