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I agree with what is being said, but I don't really see any new thoughts here. This is such a tired conversation. I used to have opinions about this, but I've g

I agree with what is being said, but I don't really see any new thoughts here. This is such a tired conversation. I used to have opinions about this, but I've grown to have a position of, "ship over anything else". Do whatever you can to ship faster. If that is nextjs, great. If that just a bunch of PHP files on an apache server? great. None of it is one-sized fits-all. /shrug

collyw 8y ago
In my experience going SPA seems to double the amount of code needed (at least).
- williamdclt 8y ago
  Maybe (I would instinctively agree). But amount of code is not a good metric for almost anything. What about amount of features? Time to ship? Time between releases? Number of bugs? User satisfaction? Development costs? ROI? Ease of hiring? Scalability? Reliability? Not particularly saying an SPA is better at the criteria above (not saying it isn't either), but these criteria are way more important than "amount of code"
  - collyw 8y ago
    If you view code as a liability then more code is worse.
    - lubonay 8y ago
      Well okay, but is it the ultimate liability? What if 2x the code gives you 10x the value?
      - collyw 8y ago
        OK, I'll expand my comment to say that "more code for the same functionality is a liability".
    - polygotdomain 8y ago
      Viewing code as a liability does not make it worse, as not all code as the same level of liability associated with it. I'd much rather have double the lines of code if it yielded a code base that was more maintainable, easier to reason about, easier to debug, and had better separation of concerns.
    - bunderbunder 8y ago
      This is such a thorny issue. First off, there's the reductio ad absurdum in the room: perl. Using perl, I could rip off some amazing things in amazingly little code. (Forth, too, come to think of it.) I think, though, that most of us who initially fell in love with it eventually came to learn that denser code is not necessarily better code. Nowadays I'll gladly take the same thing written in 5X as much Python code. Second, sometimes more code provides useful things, like bulkheads and seams that allow for easier modification in the future. Over in OO-land, I find that writing SOLID code often increases line counts considerably, but I still strongly prefer my code to be SOLID. Long story short, I find that code volume can be a proxy for code quality, but it's a very imperfect one.
      - williamdclt 8y ago
        > bulkheads and seams I really like those analogies, I'll reuse them!
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    This pokes at one of my suspicions: Personally, I agree that SPAs are way more complicated and heavyweight than you need for most sites. And they do seem to require a lot of code up-front. But it's also true that I see a lot of dissatisfaction around the long-term maintainability of doing things in basic HTML/CSS. And I'm not aware of any compelling options that give you better better modularity, but aren't some super heavy-handed SPA-centric framework like React.
    - warent 8y ago
      > Personally, I agree that SPAs are way more complicated and heavyweight than you need for most sites. This hasn't been my experience at all. SPAs are so simple for me to spin up these days with all the tooling to cover the boilerplate for you, e.g. create-react-app or Vue CLI. With the advent of cloud providers, hosting is insanely simple too. You can get a working SPA out in a day complete with a frontend, backend API, and a database.
      - bunderbunder 8y ago
        The experience is definitely easy, but it's hard to believe that it's simple. Oftentimes things that are very easy on the surface have a whole lot of complexity going on under the hood. In the case of SPA frameworks, I've not spent much time with them (I'm the back end guy on my team), but the most striking things I see whenever I get involved in a project that uses them, and when I've taken the time to learn them, is that there are just so many moving parts. And a whole lot of stuff about the internal logic of whatever SPA framework you're using, and possibly how specifically you're using it, that a newcomer has to know before they can really work efficiently. They're so complicated that I sometimes see people having to do some really elaborate things to get them to play nicely with other stuff they want to do. Using D3 in the same site comes to mind there.
        dublo7 8y ago
        I can build a whole app in only a hundred lines of code once I add a million lines of code... :)
- stackola 8y ago
  Only if you count the node_modules
  - mosselman 8y ago
    If you'd count that code you'd probably have around 1000x more code than an html-rendering back-end.
- duncan-donuts 8y ago
  I haven't had that experience. I will agree -- going with a SPA has pretty much always made things more complicated than they needed to be. I've always liked SPAs, but won't use them if I'm building a site that doesn't have complex interactions. Idk, there's a pro/con for any tech in your stack. It depends on what you actually want to be stuck supporting.
- sbhn 8y ago
  Yay, the world is waking up, google search is not spa, Ebay is not spa, Wkipedia is not spa, Youtube is not spa, Stack exchange is not spa, Duck Duck Go is not spa, HomeIdea3D.com is spa though
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    HomeIdea3D.com is a real app with complex state and stuff so an SPA makes sense here.
  - snazz 8y ago
    Google, eBay, Wikipedia, YouTube, Stack Exchange, and DuckDuckGo fit nicely with the concept of “type search in form, get list of links, video, article, QA page, etc.” HomeIdea3D tries to emulate/replace a desktop application. This is the type of tool that I would allow a SPA for, even though I normally browse with JS disabled.
  - Conlectus 8y ago
    YouTube is indeed a SPA.
    - ngrilly 8y ago
      YouTube is not really a SPA as in React or Vue. It looks like they use something similar to TurboLinks or Intercooler: https://youtube.github.io/spfjs/ https://youtube.github.io/spfjs/ Edit for downvoters: Ok, technically, YouTube is a SPA. What I meant, in the context of this discussion, is that YouTube uses a technique similar to what GitHub does, where the server returns fragments of HTML.
- sbov 8y ago
  When it comes to speed of delivering, the most important thing is usually what you have experience in. If most of your experience is in SPAs then go for it.
  - collyw 8y ago
    With SPAs you are going to need experience in a frontend and a backend framework. With server side rendering you can get away with only knowing the backend framework well.
draw_down 8y ago
I agree, people have really gotten hung up on the SPA issue.
dunk010 8y ago
Hear, hear!

collyw 8y ago

In my experience going SPA seems to double the amount of code needed (at least).

williamdclt 8y ago
Maybe (I would instinctively agree). But amount of code is not a good metric for almost anything. What about amount of features? Time to ship? Time between releases? Number of bugs? User satisfaction? Development costs? ROI? Ease of hiring? Scalability? Reliability? Not particularly saying an SPA is better at the criteria above (not saying it isn't either), but these criteria are way more important than "amount of code"
- collyw 8y ago
  If you view code as a liability then more code is worse.
  - lubonay 8y ago
    Well okay, but is it the ultimate liability? What if 2x the code gives you 10x the value?
    - collyw 8y ago
      OK, I'll expand my comment to say that "more code for the same functionality is a liability".
  - polygotdomain 8y ago
    Viewing code as a liability does not make it worse, as not all code as the same level of liability associated with it. I'd much rather have double the lines of code if it yielded a code base that was more maintainable, easier to reason about, easier to debug, and had better separation of concerns.
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    This is such a thorny issue. First off, there's the reductio ad absurdum in the room: perl. Using perl, I could rip off some amazing things in amazingly little code. (Forth, too, come to think of it.) I think, though, that most of us who initially fell in love with it eventually came to learn that denser code is not necessarily better code. Nowadays I'll gladly take the same thing written in 5X as much Python code. Second, sometimes more code provides useful things, like bulkheads and seams that allow for easier modification in the future. Over in OO-land, I find that writing SOLID code often increases line counts considerably, but I still strongly prefer my code to be SOLID. Long story short, I find that code volume can be a proxy for code quality, but it's a very imperfect one.
    - williamdclt 8y ago
      > bulkheads and seams I really like those analogies, I'll reuse them!
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  This pokes at one of my suspicions: Personally, I agree that SPAs are way more complicated and heavyweight than you need for most sites. And they do seem to require a lot of code up-front. But it's also true that I see a lot of dissatisfaction around the long-term maintainability of doing things in basic HTML/CSS. And I'm not aware of any compelling options that give you better better modularity, but aren't some super heavy-handed SPA-centric framework like React.
  - warent 8y ago
    > Personally, I agree that SPAs are way more complicated and heavyweight than you need for most sites. This hasn't been my experience at all. SPAs are so simple for me to spin up these days with all the tooling to cover the boilerplate for you, e.g. create-react-app or Vue CLI. With the advent of cloud providers, hosting is insanely simple too. You can get a working SPA out in a day complete with a frontend, backend API, and a database.
    - bunderbunder 8y ago
      The experience is definitely easy, but it's hard to believe that it's simple. Oftentimes things that are very easy on the surface have a whole lot of complexity going on under the hood. In the case of SPA frameworks, I've not spent much time with them (I'm the back end guy on my team), but the most striking things I see whenever I get involved in a project that uses them, and when I've taken the time to learn them, is that there are just so many moving parts. And a whole lot of stuff about the internal logic of whatever SPA framework you're using, and possibly how specifically you're using it, that a newcomer has to know before they can really work efficiently. They're so complicated that I sometimes see people having to do some really elaborate things to get them to play nicely with other stuff they want to do. Using D3 in the same site comes to mind there.
      - dublo7 8y ago
        I can build a whole app in only a hundred lines of code once I add a million lines of code... :)
stackola 8y ago
Only if you count the node_modules
- mosselman 8y ago
  If you'd count that code you'd probably have around 1000x more code than an html-rendering back-end.
duncan-donuts 8y ago
I haven't had that experience. I will agree -- going with a SPA has pretty much always made things more complicated than they needed to be. I've always liked SPAs, but won't use them if I'm building a site that doesn't have complex interactions. Idk, there's a pro/con for any tech in your stack. It depends on what you actually want to be stuck supporting.
sbhn 8y ago
Yay, the world is waking up, google search is not spa, Ebay is not spa, Wkipedia is not spa, Youtube is not spa, Stack exchange is not spa, Duck Duck Go is not spa, HomeIdea3D.com is spa though
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  HomeIdea3D.com is a real app with complex state and stuff so an SPA makes sense here.
- snazz 8y ago
  Google, eBay, Wikipedia, YouTube, Stack Exchange, and DuckDuckGo fit nicely with the concept of “type search in form, get list of links, video, article, QA page, etc.” HomeIdea3D tries to emulate/replace a desktop application. This is the type of tool that I would allow a SPA for, even though I normally browse with JS disabled.
- Conlectus 8y ago
  YouTube is indeed a SPA.
  - ngrilly 8y ago
    YouTube is not really a SPA as in React or Vue. It looks like they use something similar to TurboLinks or Intercooler: https://youtube.github.io/spfjs/ https://youtube.github.io/spfjs/ Edit for downvoters: Ok, technically, YouTube is a SPA. What I meant, in the context of this discussion, is that YouTube uses a technique similar to what GitHub does, where the server returns fragments of HTML.
sbov 8y ago
When it comes to speed of delivering, the most important thing is usually what you have experience in. If most of your experience is in SPAs then go for it.
- collyw 8y ago
  With SPAs you are going to need experience in a frontend and a backend framework. With server side rendering you can get away with only knowing the backend framework well.

draw_down 8y ago

I agree, people have really gotten hung up on the SPA issue.

dunk010 8y ago

Hear, hear!