6 ms·

Static Hoisting

70 points by gk1 7y ago

Havoc 7y ago
I’m personally more intrigued by the range of options Jamstack gives rather than speed/edge. eg Im currently toying with a pipeline that deploys to cloud run. But the output is so inherently portable pretty much any tech/cloud/cdn will work. That’s definitely a priority for me given how the big clouds are starting to feel like walled gardens
rubyn00bie 7y ago
Is this just caching HTML fragments on a CDN? I'm confused here. I grew up making websites using server side includes[1] and using tools like (Macromedia) Dreamweaver to generate static sties. I guess I should've just stuck with that approach but shoved the results on a CDN? I just so feel like it can't be that obvious. Please someone learn me for my benefit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Includes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Includes
- IanCal 7y ago
  If I understand right, it's similar to caching but done beforehand, automatically identifying what can be done. Just like in their examples moving a loop invariant out is similar to either calculating once and caching or manually moving it out - but you let your compiler do that.
- redis_mlc 7y ago
  Sounds like page-level caching, but they use weird terminology and metaphors. Is this another Heroku "routing mesh" gate in the making? https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/14/heroku-admits-to-performance-degradation-over-the-past-3-years-after-criticism-from-rap-genius/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/14/heroku-admits-to-performan... https://genius.engineering/herokus-ugly-secret/ https://genius.engineering/herokus-ugly-secret/
funny948 7y ago
Thats a weird idea of trying to reuse the word 'hoisting'. I'm also not getting what the magic is. That little what Jamstack can actually do, might just not need a CDN?
dmerks 7y ago
For those unfamiliar with the the general subject, the author is CEO of Vercel (Zeit until recent VC funding), a company that provides "serverless" hosting, especially for Nextjs, an open source Reactjs (Facebook) framework. Among other things, Nextjs makes it easy to segment a React app at build time into parts that are either server side rendered (SSR) or static (which can be "hoisted" onto a CDN). In the same declarative fashion, data can either be fetched from the server for the SSR components, from the browser client (e.g. to reduce server load and useless hops), or "prefetched" at build time for components that can be static like blog posts, documentation, a top 10, etc. Interestingly, the Vercel Nextjs and Google Chrome teams have collaborated... from memory: to reduce bundle sizes and to stream assets after initial render for better performance.
- dna_polymerase 7y ago
  Same effect as hosting your static stuff on a CDN, like basically everyone does already.
  - leerob 7y ago
    It's not the same as a CDN. "Static Hoisting" is pushing data to the edge and replicating it ahead of time. Legacy CDNs are just in time. The approach discussed in this article has a performance and availability advantage.
    - dna_polymerase 7y ago
      There are CDNs out there that allow me to push my content "ahead of time", like Akamai. Besides, the speed advantage vanishes after the first request.
- ForHackernews 7y ago
  > an open source Reactjs (Facebook) framework Isn't React itself already a giant JS framework? They've made a framework-for-a-framework? So the idea is to let developers write as though it's all one big React SPA (single page app) but then actually the static bits of it get compiled into vanilla HTML/CSS and served from a CDN?
dna_polymerase 7y ago
This is what people come up with if their product is dead simple but they have to justify VC funding. Seriously, there is no hidden analogy in "JAMSTACK". It is just a bunch of webservers around the globe, served via Georouting or Anycast DNS. No new pattern, no new frontiers. Look at the comments here, people are more confused about this idea and terminology than anything else.
- leerob 7y ago
  What do you mean by "hidden analogy"? JAMstack is for JavaScript, APIs, and Markup.
forty 7y ago
Generating a static website ahead of time is great, but it can have a few downside. On a big website, if you have many combinations of configuration for each page (like languages, amp/non amp, variant for several partners, etc) you have to generate a page for all combinations, which can quickly become pretty large and take a long time to generate.
- leerob 7y ago
  Have you seen Next.js's Incremental Static Generation[1] proposal and Gatsby's Incremental Builds[2]? [1]: https://github.com/zeit/next.js/discussions/11552 [2]: https://www.gatsbyjs.org/blog/2020-04-22-announcing-incremental-builds/

70 points by gk1 7y ago

I’m personally more intrigued by the range of options Jamstack gives rather than speed/edge. eg Im currently toying with a pipeline that deploys to cloud run. But the output is so inherently portable pretty much any tech/cloud/cdn will work. That’s definitely a priority for me given how the big clouds are starting to feel like walled gardens

rubyn00bie 7y ago

Is this just caching HTML fragments on a CDN? I'm confused here. I grew up making websites using server side includes[1] and using tools like (Macromedia) Dreamweaver to generate static sties. I guess I should've just stuck with that approach but shoved the results on a CDN? I just so feel like it can't be that obvious. Please someone learn me for my benefit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Includes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Includes

IanCal 7y ago
If I understand right, it's similar to caching but done beforehand, automatically identifying what can be done. Just like in their examples moving a loop invariant out is similar to either calculating once and caching or manually moving it out - but you let your compiler do that.
redis_mlc 7y ago
Sounds like page-level caching, but they use weird terminology and metaphors. Is this another Heroku "routing mesh" gate in the making? https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/14/heroku-admits-to-performance-degradation-over-the-past-3-years-after-criticism-from-rap-genius/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/14/heroku-admits-to-performan... https://genius.engineering/herokus-ugly-secret/ https://genius.engineering/herokus-ugly-secret/

funny948 7y ago

Thats a weird idea of trying to reuse the word 'hoisting'. I'm also not getting what the magic is. That little what Jamstack can actually do, might just not need a CDN?

dmerks 7y ago

For those unfamiliar with the the general subject, the author is CEO of Vercel (Zeit until recent VC funding), a company that provides "serverless" hosting, especially for Nextjs, an open source Reactjs (Facebook) framework. Among other things, Nextjs makes it easy to segment a React app at build time into parts that are either server side rendered (SSR) or static (which can be "hoisted" onto a CDN). In the same declarative fashion, data can either be fetched from the server for the SSR components, from the browser client (e.g. to reduce server load and useless hops), or "prefetched" at build time for components that can be static like blog posts, documentation, a top 10, etc. Interestingly, the Vercel Nextjs and Google Chrome teams have collaborated... from memory: to reduce bundle sizes and to stream assets after initial render for better performance.

dna_polymerase 7y ago
Same effect as hosting your static stuff on a CDN, like basically everyone does already.
- leerob 7y ago
  It's not the same as a CDN. "Static Hoisting" is pushing data to the edge and replicating it ahead of time. Legacy CDNs are just in time. The approach discussed in this article has a performance and availability advantage.
  - dna_polymerase 7y ago
    There are CDNs out there that allow me to push my content "ahead of time", like Akamai. Besides, the speed advantage vanishes after the first request.
ForHackernews 7y ago
> an open source Reactjs (Facebook) framework Isn't React itself already a giant JS framework? They've made a framework-for-a-framework? So the idea is to let developers write as though it's all one big React SPA (single page app) but then actually the static bits of it get compiled into vanilla HTML/CSS and served from a CDN?

dna_polymerase 7y ago

This is what people come up with if their product is dead simple but they have to justify VC funding. Seriously, there is no hidden analogy in "JAMSTACK". It is just a bunch of webservers around the globe, served via Georouting or Anycast DNS. No new pattern, no new frontiers. Look at the comments here, people are more confused about this idea and terminology than anything else.

leerob 7y ago
What do you mean by "hidden analogy"? JAMstack is for JavaScript, APIs, and Markup.

forty 7y ago

Generating a static website ahead of time is great, but it can have a few downside. On a big website, if you have many combinations of configuration for each page (like languages, amp/non amp, variant for several partners, etc) you have to generate a page for all combinations, which can quickly become pretty large and take a long time to generate.

leerob 7y ago
Have you seen Next.js's Incremental Static Generation[1] proposal and Gatsby's Incremental Builds[2]? [1]: https://github.com/zeit/next.js/discussions/11552 [2]: https://www.gatsbyjs.org/blog/2020-04-22-announcing-incremental-builds/