4 ms·

The real answer to why everyone hates SPAs now is that there are well funded companies providing frameworks that are touting their SSR capabilities as a massive

The real answer to why everyone hates SPAs now is that there are well funded companies providing frameworks that are touting their SSR capabilities as a massive advantage, seeding the internet with content about how SPAs are the worst. Something similar happened about a decade ago when everyone started loving SPAs. SPAs didn’t become popular because of cell phones. In fact, outside of Facebook for a short period of time, there has been a strong consensus over the entire “everything must be a SPA” period that mobile apps should be native. Facebook, once it realized its mistake, tried to fit its massive “build once run anywhere” peg into a tiny “native for mobile, HTML5 for the web” hole through React Native, not SPAs. SPAs have their place. Although I’m not a huge fan (though less of a hater now, thanks to the fact that at least the JS world has largely agreed that typing is good), I have a highly successful SPA that’s been used with almost no maintenance besides basic security upgrades for nearly 7 years now. The reason is that we used a proper framework that fully supports building a SPA, EmberJS, but it could have been anything other than trying to cobble together a variety of react-* libraries thst only barely work together, and that our application actually was a heavily interactive user driven application with most of the stuff happening on the same page. There are only a few minor other pages (such as settings), so the application itself is largely a single page application, which is why a SPA fits it so well.

rhaway84773 4y ago
I’m increasingly convinced that so much of the trend following we’re seeing in the front end development world today is a result of the fact that ReactJS absolutely burst through the scene when it realized because it had some game changing ideas, but never had the courage to become a framework. Instead, it insisted on being a thin UI layer forcing others to fill the gaps, which have led to all sorts of startups/open source projects popping up trying to convince others that theirs is the one true way. So instead of being a sober discussion around the pros and cons of using certain technologies in certain scenarios, it’s being recast to resemble the fashion industry where everyone is insisting that their trend is the next big thing.
- swatcoder 4y ago
  > So instead of being a sober discussion around the pros and cons of using certain technologies in certain scenarios, it’s being recast to resemble the fashion industry where everyone is insisting that their trend is the next big thing. If they were still easily accessible, you could go back and read identical drama play out on 50 year old usenet newsgroups and mailing lists. Our industry is built on the genius of many clever tinkers who could get any tool to meet any task, and plenty enough stubborn contrarians and manic hype-builders ready to argue to their death (or until the next fashion comes through) that the one true light has finally been glimpsed. Meanwhile, countless quiet and productive teams privately figured out how to use a tool well and just stuck with it for as long as it still made sense, not letting themselves getting so wrapped up in the public hullabaloo -- just like you did with your EmberJS project. The fashion debates reflect that a lot of work is actually art, while those many quiet, healthy projects reflect the engineering processes that see us get paid better than most other artists.
acdha 4y ago
I’ve viewed it as backlash for the way they were promoted heavily as the solution for web development based on claims about being faster or more reliable. One of the weird things about that period was that people would say something about performance, you could point to WebPageTest.org or RUM stats showing the opposite was true, and have people just trying to handwave around it. After a decade of those problems not going away, I think a lot of people have been realizing that there is something fundamental at work. I’d like to think that as a field we’ve learned something about measuring claims or not picking your architecture based on what someone in a different business with different users is doing, but experience otherwise.

rhaway84773 4y ago

I’m increasingly convinced that so much of the trend following we’re seeing in the front end development world today is a result of the fact that ReactJS absolutely burst through the scene when it realized because it had some game changing ideas, but never had the courage to become a framework. Instead, it insisted on being a thin UI layer forcing others to fill the gaps, which have led to all sorts of startups/open source projects popping up trying to convince others that theirs is the one true way. So instead of being a sober discussion around the pros and cons of using certain technologies in certain scenarios, it’s being recast to resemble the fashion industry where everyone is insisting that their trend is the next big thing.

swatcoder 4y ago
> So instead of being a sober discussion around the pros and cons of using certain technologies in certain scenarios, it’s being recast to resemble the fashion industry where everyone is insisting that their trend is the next big thing. If they were still easily accessible, you could go back and read identical drama play out on 50 year old usenet newsgroups and mailing lists. Our industry is built on the genius of many clever tinkers who could get any tool to meet any task, and plenty enough stubborn contrarians and manic hype-builders ready to argue to their death (or until the next fashion comes through) that the one true light has finally been glimpsed. Meanwhile, countless quiet and productive teams privately figured out how to use a tool well and just stuck with it for as long as it still made sense, not letting themselves getting so wrapped up in the public hullabaloo -- just like you did with your EmberJS project. The fashion debates reflect that a lot of work is actually art, while those many quiet, healthy projects reflect the engineering processes that see us get paid better than most other artists.

acdha 4y ago

I’ve viewed it as backlash for the way they were promoted heavily as the solution for web development based on claims about being faster or more reliable. One of the weird things about that period was that people would say something about performance, you could point to WebPageTest.org or RUM stats showing the opposite was true, and have people just trying to handwave around it. After a decade of those problems not going away, I think a lot of people have been realizing that there is something fundamental at work. I’d like to think that as a field we’ve learned something about measuring claims or not picking your architecture based on what someone in a different business with different users is doing, but experience otherwise.