[elktown]

Not everything needs to be a SPA. I genuinely believe that the web would've been a much better place today on most important metrics (performance, simplicity, accessibility etc.) if this SPA shift would've never happened. The opportunity cost seems massive to me.

[andai]

Most software I've used could have been a few hundred lines of PHP. But then they'd be done in like a day, which is great if you're a business owner (and the reason Pieter Levels uses PHP, for example), but not so great if you need to get paid to keep churning the code indefinitely (i.e. most people's situation)... and ideally hire all your friends to help too ;)

[elktown]

There are indeed less user-centric metrics with surprising weight when it comes down to it. I've also noticed that "We read a FAANG blog post and got enchanted" is easily remembered as "Everything was bad and we had to change it all" ;).

[jauntywundrkind]

I don't find litigating this to be useful or interesting. Debating what is needed could show us lots of things we could cut. But would that bring real gain?

SPA's have really nice performance characteristics. Code is all loaded. The page can transition between states rather than total redraw. A good SPA should offer the same capabilities too, ought have URL routing and good history support.

I do think the web would be faster and simpler without SPAs. But it wouldn't be anywhere near as capable, as interesting, and as loved.

[elktown]

> I don't find litigating this to be useful or interesting.

I think it is useful because our field is woefully inept at anything resembling backtracking, and it's having concrete detrimental effects all over the field by, for example, increasing mountains of bloat eating up hardware improvements.

> SPA's have really nice performance characteristics. [..] A good SPA should offer the same capabilities too

The problem is that not even large teams without any obvious lack of resources are also unable to prevent sluggishness from creeping in to SPAs. So I guess there's a theoretical SPA and a de facto one.

> But it wouldn't be anywhere near as capable, as interesting, and as loved.

Capable sure, if you're creating Google Earth style apps. But when you start using vague and extremely subjective adjectives like "interesting" and "loved" it should be a signal that something's off here.

[jauntywundrkind]

What you say sounds like we ought have suffocated and starved the web. I feel like "vague" and "subjective" is actually just pretty fucking obvious, didn't need a ton of support for it: the web is the go-to platform for app development because its featureful and works everywhere and is connected by default and nothing else comes close.

The web is where it is (literally everywhere) because it is capable and powerful, and it's because we didn't listen to retrogressive gate keepers insisting the web shouldnt really be for those uses cases.

The alternative to this is nothing. Is to not have had connected software. But we aspired to make great systems. That made some people very mad.

[elktown]

Nothing of that requires SPA, and the alternative is certainly not “nothing”. Not sure how you even get to that conclusion, strange rant. The meaning of alternative cost is not standing still.

[jauntywundrkind]

> Nothing of that requires SPA, and the alternative is certainly not “nothing”.

Yes actually dev teams did have a massive leap in capability with dynamic HTML & updating the page.

> Not sure how you even get to that conclusion, strange rant.

Not sure how you even can miss that shift, strange miss.

(So, uh, do you always have to be such a deorgatory shit that I have to turn your crap faced mean shit back around? Can you talk like not a flaming shit bag? I don't super love turning your shitty mean crap ass personally aggressive negative worded words back at you, but you just have no vision & are ongoingly a mean shit about everything & so personally shitty about how you phrase things? And you are in such obvious denial. In ways that make zero sense. I don't think anyone sees how the web would grow while meeting your ridiculous constraints and that just seems obvious. Whatever third way you are trying to advocate for is clear as mud. And you cover for saying nothing with aggression! But mostly just stop being such an aggressive ass & engage like you can get over yourself, pull your head out of your ass, stop being a belittling shit, and make a God damned case, rather than throwing endless more empty bile.)