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> I highly doubt the JavaScript is re-downloaded every time the author visits Gmail. If it is, something has gone wrong. I don't think the initial load time is

> I highly doubt the JavaScript is re-downloaded every time the author visits Gmail. If it is, something has gone wrong. I don't think the initial load time is a good metric of performance for a true web app; on subsequent visits that 12.6MB should be loaded directly from disk, just like the binary of an installed native program. I don't know about Gmail, but this argument misses something important. A web app with several megs of JS is most likely being developed and pushed to production on a schedule (daily, or weekly, or something). So you're probably re-downloading the whole thing every few days. > Also, JSON is leaner than HTML Mmmaybe. With gzip, the difference isn't that large. And since not all developers are perfectly careful, the initial JSON will often contain stuff that isn't necessary for the initial UI state, so server side rendered HTML will often be leaner and faster.

_bxg1 7y ago
> A web app with several megs of JS is most likely being developed and pushed to production on a schedule (daily, or weekly, or something). So you're probably re-downloading the whole thing every few days. That's a fair point that I hadn't considered. But still: native apps get updates too. I've been annoyed by really frequent update prompts. Maybe the web streamlines the process to a point where devs may not notice the overhead it's causing for users, but that still comes back to being a UX issue, not a technical one, IMO. Maybe continuous-integration isn't a good idea when it comes to client software in general. Maybe releases need to be artificially slowed to a weekly or monthly cadence, for the sake of the user experience.
- cousin_it 7y ago
  The problem is that the teams developing new features (or fixing bugs) will all push for faster releases. So anyone who advocates for slower releases needs to have a lot of political pull, for no clear political win. So it basically doesn't happen.

_bxg1 7y ago

> A web app with several megs of JS is most likely being developed and pushed to production on a schedule (daily, or weekly, or something). So you're probably re-downloading the whole thing every few days. That's a fair point that I hadn't considered. But still: native apps get updates too. I've been annoyed by really frequent update prompts. Maybe the web streamlines the process to a point where devs may not notice the overhead it's causing for users, but that still comes back to being a UX issue, not a technical one, IMO. Maybe continuous-integration isn't a good idea when it comes to client software in general. Maybe releases need to be artificially slowed to a weekly or monthly cadence, for the sake of the user experience.

cousin_it 7y ago
The problem is that the teams developing new features (or fixing bugs) will all push for faster releases. So anyone who advocates for slower releases needs to have a lot of political pull, for no clear political win. So it basically doesn't happen.