Who suggested that having the client bear some of the load unburdens developers? I've done that kind of work, and it was some of the hardest work I've ever done

Who suggested that having the client bear some of the load unburdens developers? I've done that kind of work, and it was some of the hardest work I've ever done. And "servers shouldn't work hard" is a similar oversimplification, perhaps even a misapprehension. It's not so much that the server's cores should ideally sit idle, as that in almost any non-trivial application where scalability is even a concern, the server is probably already working hard, and having the client bear some load where it makes sense to do so can offer vast improvements in how quickly and well you're able to scale the application to meet demand.