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It's pretty hard to compare some random free PHPBB running on a underspec'd host to companies with billions in revenue to support their platform. Honestly, redd

It's pretty hard to compare some random free PHPBB running on a underspec'd host to companies with billions in revenue to support their platform. Honestly, reddit and HN are so simplistic, there's not much added by JavaScript doing any rendering. Reddit in particular is horrific. Their API is slow, and their JS bogs down on anything that isn't a super-fast desktop. Server pages would be able to handle most of what they do, faster and better, except for crap like live updates or typing/posting indicators that don't add much value.

com2kid 5y ago
> Their API is slow, and their JS bogs down on anything that isn't a super-fast desktop. I'm on a $1000 4 year old laptop. Initial render on home page is under 3 seconds. Comments load in under 2 seconds, Hacker News is faster, but Reddit is the next best thing. This is all w/o ad block, new reddit UI enabled. With uBlock Origin enabled, it is marginally faster. > It's pretty hard to compare some random free PHPBB running on a underspec'd host to companies with billions in revenue to support their platform. My comparison was random free PHPBB to random free BBS hosted on dial up in the 90s. Up until the late 201xs, random free 90s BBS performed better.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  I'm sorry but 2 seconds to load a page with primarily text is not something you should brag about. This kind of stuff should take miliseconds to load, with the bulk of it spent waiting for the server's reply. In fact, the "old" Reddit (which is entirely SSR with minimal JS on the front-end) would load in under less than a second.
  - com2kid 5y ago
    > I'm sorry but 2 seconds to load a page with primarily text is not something you should brag about. Reddit's homepage is primarily video and photos. The homepage contents are obscenely dynamic, I have no doubt they use tons of caches for everything, but the homepage is not simple at all. Since I am logged in, there is a profile lookup, as well as looking up to see if I have an notifications. There is the fetching of stories + metadata from my personal feed, which involves custom prioritization. I doubt any of that can be trivially cached. Reddit is not some simple static text website. Hacker news doesn't render a different page for every visitor, Reddit does. Heck HN saves on CPU by not even telling me if there are replies to my posts!

com2kid 5y ago

> Their API is slow, and their JS bogs down on anything that isn't a super-fast desktop. I'm on a $1000 4 year old laptop. Initial render on home page is under 3 seconds. Comments load in under 2 seconds, Hacker News is faster, but Reddit is the next best thing. This is all w/o ad block, new reddit UI enabled. With uBlock Origin enabled, it is marginally faster. > It's pretty hard to compare some random free PHPBB running on a underspec'd host to companies with billions in revenue to support their platform. My comparison was random free PHPBB to random free BBS hosted on dial up in the 90s. Up until the late 201xs, random free 90s BBS performed better.

Nextgrid 5y ago
I'm sorry but 2 seconds to load a page with primarily text is not something you should brag about. This kind of stuff should take miliseconds to load, with the bulk of it spent waiting for the server's reply. In fact, the "old" Reddit (which is entirely SSR with minimal JS on the front-end) would load in under less than a second.
- com2kid 5y ago
  > I'm sorry but 2 seconds to load a page with primarily text is not something you should brag about. Reddit's homepage is primarily video and photos. The homepage contents are obscenely dynamic, I have no doubt they use tons of caches for everything, but the homepage is not simple at all. Since I am logged in, there is a profile lookup, as well as looking up to see if I have an notifications. There is the fetching of stories + metadata from my personal feed, which involves custom prioritization. I doubt any of that can be trivially cached. Reddit is not some simple static text website. Hacker news doesn't render a different page for every visitor, Reddit does. Heck HN saves on CPU by not even telling me if there are replies to my posts!