[CydeWeys]

I have a fast FIOS connection, and the New York Times webpage still takes around 6 seconds to fully load according to the Chrome Network panel. In that time it makes 226 requests and downloads 168 KB. This is after several page refreshes, so I'm fully taking advantage of browser caching. Simply put, there's way more images, fonts, and network callbacks on that site than on HN. It's way more heavyweight. HN, by contrast, downloads all of the content in only SIX requests, at 14.8 KB total, and in under a second.

It's the number of requests that's killing the NYT site. HN is very simple and old school, and doesn't do a single thing that isn't explicitly necessary to render exactly the content you see on the page, which is presented cleanly and without frills.