[k3n]

> yet you present it as if a difference of couple kilobytes (which can be reduced to nearly zero by proper design) makes a life-or-death difference in website performance.

That's quite the stretch, given what I wrote. I only said it was inefficient.

There's also something to be said for the fact that rendering templates on the server will make any meaningful client-side caching almost impossible. And mobile is the new dial-up; while some are fortunate to have mobile broadband, it's certainly not ubiquitous, and multi-core phones certainly aren't the norm either unless you only want to consider the HN readership for your sample.