Comment by nisten | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nisten | Hacker News Reader

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To add to this, bandwidth and app size is not important to the user(they'll watch netflix later). The only thing they notice, is response time.

React with well defined static content routing and server-side rendering is amazing at this because the first packets that the server sends the user is html/css jumble.

You can get your app to show text and formatting in as little as 20ms(depending on where you deploy it), then show images, then you don't care if the rest of App and all the js and 3rd party crap take another 2.5s and 3mb to load, The user will do a bit of reading and picture watching, before using a button or input field. However if they're on the go and loose connection, now they have a fully functional back button in their browser to read the next or previous cached html/css content.

How is this amazing?

We've been "server side rendering" since the inception of the internet.

If you build your pages with CSS at the top and JS at the bottom you're already achieving most of that effect right there, no extra tools needed.

The browser will load the css and content first, and then process the JS requests (Which are easily cachable by the server AND the browser).

universal web app, that is web apps that can be rendered from the server or on the client are indeed amazing. Blazing fast loading on first use (like a traditional webpage), but also super fast to use for every subsequent actions (like a SPA). For a website like amazon, that can make a huge difference in revenues. The price to pay on the other hand is complexity. It demands programmers that really know what they are doing, and even then, still has an overall cost you wouldn't find with an SPA. Is it worth it? Well if you're a startup with 200 users, probably not. But for a big company, that can be a big way to improve results

I suspect nisten is referring to server side rendering using React.

I think so too, but my statement still stands.

There's nothing new or especially special about "server side rendering", and nothing about React rendering either.

Rendering on the server lets you do whatever you want.

Want to put the user in a specific state? Sure, go for it.

Want to use a starter or null-state? Sure, go for it.

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