undefined | Better HN

0 pointsnaasking9mo ago0 comments

The only real use case for an SPA is something that has to continue to work offline. There are legitimate cases like this, but most apps developed as SPAs aren't it.

> No SSR framework figured out how to do this because they thought about pages rather than experiences.

Laravel, Blazor and apps designed around HTMX are all like this. "SSR framework" has literally nothing to do with "pages rather than experiences". Pages are just a medium to deliver experiences.

0 comments

TimTheTinker9mo ago

> The only real use case

The original idea behind an SPA was to enable API-only backends (with static file service). I still think that's a very worthy use case.

Why not decouple the backend from the concerns of particular views? It makes for a more complex frontend, but it also allows multiple, highly differentiated frontend apps to be build on top of a single set of backend APIs. Esri's ArcGIS Online powers a lot of specialized frontend-only web apps. I used to be on their Business Analyst team (that's a web app) - and I have to say I really like the pattern of building apps this way.

naaskingOP9mo ago

That's not a use case, that's an implementation. What is the end user actually getting with this architecture that can't be obtained by the server-side one? Offline functionality is the only differentiating feature.

2 more replies

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse