[roqi]

> Making a 'server call' on each interaction is also what web apps used to do before SPAs were a thing.

One of the reasons behind the popularity around webapps was that they would no longer need to make 'a server call' on each interaction.

> And in many cases it's what SPAs do as well.

I feel you're grossly misrepresenting what SPAs do. SPAs do calls to send and receive data, not to fetch server-side rendered content.

[motogpjimbo]

> One of the reasons behind the popularity around webapps was that they would no longer need to make 'a server call' on each interaction.

Ironically, many modern SPAs are significantly slower than the traditional apps they replaced. Try using Twitter's webapp on a non-premium phone, for example.

Sometimes it's regrettable that the webdev truck has no rear-view mirror.

[kokanee]

The entire internet is slower because it's being squeezed to oblivion for monetization and tracking purposes. No matter what technology you choose to render HTML with, your company is going to have a slew of systems for injecting 3rd party scripts, running A/B tests, collecting analytics that include recording user sessions, etc etc. Back "before SPAs" we just weren't doing as much crap in the browser.

[heavyset_go]

Hell, try using the Twitter web app on something with 8GB of memory or that's older than 5 years old.

[roqi]

> Ironically, many modern SPAs are significantly slower than the traditional apps they replaced.

All software becoming slower is a already a meme. This isn't exactly a SPA issue.

> Sometimes it's regrettable that the webdev truck has no rear-view mirror.

The "software is getting slower" meme was the Hallmark of Java in the server when it was released in the 90s. This is nothing new, or specific to web dev.

Also, I feel you're grossly misrepresenting the problem. Reddit's mobile page is considerably slower than the old reddit page, but it's perceived performance is quite good. All posts are cached and instead of full page reloads it just switches content virtually instantly.

It might be fancy to shit on everyone else's work, but this only happens if you lack objectiveness and sincerity.