Great article, despite me disagreeing with most of the points. I think it's a good compilation of issues with SPA's, but I don't think most of these problems are inherent to the architecture itself.
Modern SPA routers basically cache everything, once you land on a page both the data and components for that page live inside your browser and forward/back navigation should work seamlessly without making any network requests. Of course that doesn't preclude developers from breaking that somehow, but in general it should just work. And you get the added benefit of preloading data for pages when links scroll into view which helps when you're on unreliable internet. I think in general, the worse your connection the more you want to do on-device, the more you want to preload, and the less you want to rely on an internet connection to navigate around a site.
> When I was in 5th grade, I would load up GameFAQs guides for Final Fantasy III on my iPod Touch before a road trip, and in the car I’d make sure not navigate away from the page, or I’d lose the guide. When I avoid clicking links between subways stops, I’m building on behavior I learned as a child, not as a software engineer.
I think this is a stronger argument for SPA's or at least against the hard page load. An SPA can keep old UI around while the next page loads, and it can keep that UI if a network call times out or connection is dropped. It's strictly better in this regard.
> you need to be continuously investing significant engineering effort into cutting-edge application work.
Or I can just let the smart fellas and gals at Svelte, Solid, Remix, Nuxt, Vercel etc do that for me :)
b_e_n_t_o_n•2h ago
Modern SPA routers basically cache everything, once you land on a page both the data and components for that page live inside your browser and forward/back navigation should work seamlessly without making any network requests. Of course that doesn't preclude developers from breaking that somehow, but in general it should just work. And you get the added benefit of preloading data for pages when links scroll into view which helps when you're on unreliable internet. I think in general, the worse your connection the more you want to do on-device, the more you want to preload, and the less you want to rely on an internet connection to navigate around a site.
> When I was in 5th grade, I would load up GameFAQs guides for Final Fantasy III on my iPod Touch before a road trip, and in the car I’d make sure not navigate away from the page, or I’d lose the guide. When I avoid clicking links between subways stops, I’m building on behavior I learned as a child, not as a software engineer.
I think this is a stronger argument for SPA's or at least against the hard page load. An SPA can keep old UI around while the next page loads, and it can keep that UI if a network call times out or connection is dropped. It's strictly better in this regard.
> you need to be continuously investing significant engineering effort into cutting-edge application work.
Or I can just let the smart fellas and gals at Svelte, Solid, Remix, Nuxt, Vercel etc do that for me :)