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In theory I guess, but I'd bet that basically every SPA is using enough JS libs that the initial load is much bigger than a bunch of halfheartedly-optimized basic HTML. I bet somebody somewhere has written a SPA-style page designed to be super-optimized in both initial load and API behavior just because, but I don't think I've ever seen one.

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I agree with the general sentiment, but if you used Facebook and YouTube you know they respond immediately on tap, even if the view hasn’t completely loaded. They are SPA-style pages.

Unfortunately they are the exception as there are a lot of awful SPAs that focus on looking cool while they’re barely usable. Looking at you, Airbnb.

Facebook and YouTube can afford to use SPAs without worrying too much about performance penalty because they invest massive amounts of effort into highly optimized and widespread content delivery networks, to the point where many ISPs literally host dedicated on-site caches for them.

The nice thing about SPAs is you can push them out to the edge with a CDN quite easily.

Easily compared to what?

Compared to non-SPAs.

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