Well, backend is our precious server resources and front end resources belong to the lowly user. It's a matter of scale though, frontend is optinized for one concurrent user. Plenty of small websites using slow and bloated frameworks on the backend because it's easy.

Simple economics; who pays for the servers and who pays for the front-end execution?

Front-ends are essentially free distributed computing resources while the backends need to be paid for.

I don't think that is true of "HN". This thread, about how wasteful frontend development is, is a pretty standard trope in the comments here.

Loads of developers everywhere, frontend and backend, go to lengths to optimise their programs. Loads of other developers also don't care.

I have stopped mentioning frontend performance being my speciality on interviews as it has elicited tepid responses from all but one.

It's funny how some folks with no domain experience hn seem to be obsessed with html.