[SkyMarshal]

>The vast majority of problems being solved with software do not require the bells and whistles of Facebook & Gmail.

Even with FB and Gmail, I've gotten the impression that neither of those is fully client or server-side, but rather highly optimized hybrids where component processing tasks are done wherever they can be with highest performance and lowest latency.

Both seem acutely conscious of comparative speeds of server-side rendering + internet latency vs. client-side rendering.

Not sure though, only an impression based on anecdotal evidence, anyone more familiar with their architectures?

[encoderer]

Facebooks architecture here is impressive and you can read more about it, they call it Bigpipe. (Of course this is probably, to some extent, out-dated by now).