3 ms·

I don't know, I think the most painful aspect of having to do a full reload is how I efficient the site is. The actual data is a few KB, but the page itself has

I don't know, I think the most painful aspect of having to do a full reload is how I efficient the site is. The actual data is a few KB, but the page itself has to download 100 MB and the web browser is burning through a GB of RAM. Like I don't find Hacker News to be egregious to navigate, and nearly every nav is a reload. It runs fine on my 2008 laptop with 4 GB of RAM. But I go to DoorDash on the same device, and it takes 30s to load up a list of 50 items. They give you a countdown for a double dash, and I genuinely don't think it's possible to order some curry and get a 6 pack of soda in less than 3 minutes. And 2.5 minutes is waiting for it to render enough to give me the interface. Almost none of it is a full reload.

cosmic_cheese 1y ago
Yeah, the enemy isn’t the need to reload, it’s reloading taking a long time due to too much garbage that’s not the content the user is interested in having to come down off the wire and render. A site that requires an occasional split second reload is always going to be preferred to a behemoth that doesn’t need reloading but has me staring at blank screens and loading spinners half the time I’m using it.
nine_k 1y ago
An SPA can be lean and fast. React is the prevailing Web framework today? Preact is like 5 KiB of code. What makes SPAs unwieldy is not the technology but the lack of desire to optimize. It loads fine on yesteryear's Macbook Air? Enough, push it. I very well remember heavy, slow-loading websites of, say, year 2000, without any SPA stuff, even though lightweight, quick-loading pages existed even then, in the epoch of dial-up internet. It's not the technology, it's the desire to cram in more, and to ship faster, with least thinking involved.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  > I very well remember heavy, slow-loading websites of, say, year 2000, without any SPA stuff, even though lightweight, quick-loading pages existed even then, in the epoch of dial-up internet. Sure, lightweight, quick-loading pages existed, but sometimes you want to see a picture.
  - nine_k 1y ago
    Google appeared in 1998. It was very noticeable how fast it loaded compared to competitors like AltaVista and Yahoo. None of them featured large photos. This was visible not only on a 33600 phone connection at home, but also on a megabit connection at work, because, shockingly, how fast your backend is also plays a major role.
    - Izkata 1y ago
      Speaking of speed, don't forget when gmail and google maps first came out: With the data copied locally they could separate the UI from server requests for a lot of interactions so a lot of the UI was actually instant and you could keep doing things while the requests were handled in the background. This seems to have been missed by a lot of modern stuff that doesn't bother figuring out if this is even possible and opts to show a loading spinner instead.
mym1990 1y ago
Hmm, I would say comparing Hacker News to DoorDash is not exactly apples to apples. There may also be ulterior motives to make a website slow(or at least not optimized) if the company wants to funnel people towards an app on the phone.
dzhiurgis 1y ago
Gmail takes 3s to load. And HN is a website, not an app.
- paulryanrogers 1y ago
  > Gmail takes 3s to load On a 2008 device, in 2025? On a mobile connection?
- xyzsparetimexyz 1y ago
  How is HN not an app? All the content is user generated. Everything is interactive. What's the difference?
  - dzhiurgis 1y ago
    Most of the time spent is content consumption (viewing html documents), rather interaction (which is only 2 simple actions).
    - xyzsparetimexyz 1y ago
      I suppose that's valid. Feels fairly arbitrary though
    - da_chicken 1y ago
      Navigating to a thread isn't much different than navigating to a store. Upvoting isn't much different than adding to the cart. Payment isn't much different than adding a comment. I think the interaction levels are incredibly similar. The primary difference is the amount of images displayed, but that really isn't a significant aspect of web design or Internet traffic in 2025.
      - dzhiurgis 1y ago
        When you posit like that makes me think doordash shouldn’t be an app at first place.
  - layer8 1y ago
Aurornis 1y ago
> But I go to DoorDash on the same device, and it takes 30s to load up a list of 50 items. > And 2.5 minutes is waiting for it to render enough to give me the interface. I have a very old MacBook Air (one of the painfully slow ones) that I use for development reference for what a slow machine looks like. I just tried clicking around DoorDash and didn’t see anything nearly this bad. Not even close. Every time there’s a Hacker News thread about how slow websites are, there are dozens of comments like this claiming extremely large latency numbers. I can’t tell how much of it is exaggeration for effect, or if some people have configurations with weird quirks that make them abnormally slow. I suspect it’s a lot of this: > on my 2008 laptop with 4 GB of RAM. Sorry, but I don’t think it makes sense for companies to optimize their websites for computers that are nearly two decades old and don’t even have enough RAM to run a modern operating system. The intersection between people who spend money on a expensive luxury service like food delivery to their door and people who won’t spend the cost of a couple DoorDash deliveries to upgrade from a 2008 laptop to a 2018 laptop in 2025 is negligibly small.

cosmic_cheese 1y ago

Yeah, the enemy isn’t the need to reload, it’s reloading taking a long time due to too much garbage that’s not the content the user is interested in having to come down off the wire and render. A site that requires an occasional split second reload is always going to be preferred to a behemoth that doesn’t need reloading but has me staring at blank screens and loading spinners half the time I’m using it.

nine_k 1y ago

An SPA can be lean and fast. React is the prevailing Web framework today? Preact is like 5 KiB of code. What makes SPAs unwieldy is not the technology but the lack of desire to optimize. It loads fine on yesteryear's Macbook Air? Enough, push it. I very well remember heavy, slow-loading websites of, say, year 2000, without any SPA stuff, even though lightweight, quick-loading pages existed even then, in the epoch of dial-up internet. It's not the technology, it's the desire to cram in more, and to ship faster, with least thinking involved.

thaumasiotes 1y ago
> I very well remember heavy, slow-loading websites of, say, year 2000, without any SPA stuff, even though lightweight, quick-loading pages existed even then, in the epoch of dial-up internet. Sure, lightweight, quick-loading pages existed, but sometimes you want to see a picture.
- nine_k 1y ago
  Google appeared in 1998. It was very noticeable how fast it loaded compared to competitors like AltaVista and Yahoo. None of them featured large photos. This was visible not only on a 33600 phone connection at home, but also on a megabit connection at work, because, shockingly, how fast your backend is also plays a major role.
  - Izkata 1y ago
    Speaking of speed, don't forget when gmail and google maps first came out: With the data copied locally they could separate the UI from server requests for a lot of interactions so a lot of the UI was actually instant and you could keep doing things while the requests were handled in the background. This seems to have been missed by a lot of modern stuff that doesn't bother figuring out if this is even possible and opts to show a loading spinner instead.

mym1990 1y ago

Hmm, I would say comparing Hacker News to DoorDash is not exactly apples to apples. There may also be ulterior motives to make a website slow(or at least not optimized) if the company wants to funnel people towards an app on the phone.

dzhiurgis 1y ago

Gmail takes 3s to load. And HN is a website, not an app.

paulryanrogers 1y ago
> Gmail takes 3s to load On a 2008 device, in 2025? On a mobile connection?
xyzsparetimexyz 1y ago
How is HN not an app? All the content is user generated. Everything is interactive. What's the difference?
- dzhiurgis 1y ago
  Most of the time spent is content consumption (viewing html documents), rather interaction (which is only 2 simple actions).
  - xyzsparetimexyz 1y ago
    I suppose that's valid. Feels fairly arbitrary though
  - da_chicken 1y ago
    Navigating to a thread isn't much different than navigating to a store. Upvoting isn't much different than adding to the cart. Payment isn't much different than adding a comment. I think the interaction levels are incredibly similar. The primary difference is the amount of images displayed, but that really isn't a significant aspect of web design or Internet traffic in 2025.
    - dzhiurgis 1y ago
      When you posit like that makes me think doordash shouldn’t be an app at first place.
- layer8 1y ago

Aurornis 1y ago

> But I go to DoorDash on the same device, and it takes 30s to load up a list of 50 items. > And 2.5 minutes is waiting for it to render enough to give me the interface. I have a very old MacBook Air (one of the painfully slow ones) that I use for development reference for what a slow machine looks like. I just tried clicking around DoorDash and didn’t see anything nearly this bad. Not even close. Every time there’s a Hacker News thread about how slow websites are, there are dozens of comments like this claiming extremely large latency numbers. I can’t tell how much of it is exaggeration for effect, or if some people have configurations with weird quirks that make them abnormally slow. I suspect it’s a lot of this: > on my 2008 laptop with 4 GB of RAM. Sorry, but I don’t think it makes sense for companies to optimize their websites for computers that are nearly two decades old and don’t even have enough RAM to run a modern operating system. The intersection between people who spend money on a expensive luxury service like food delivery to their door and people who won’t spend the cost of a couple DoorDash deliveries to upgrade from a 2008 laptop to a 2018 laptop in 2025 is negligibly small.