So much whining about SPAs. A properly written SPA is very performant and really...

andybak · on May 21, 2022

> A properly written SPA is very performant and really doesn't have huge differences compared to MPA.

Maybe true but in the wild the vast majority of websites manage to fall down on one or both of these.

So either it's hard to "properly write" an SPA or something else is going wrong.

endisneigh · on May 21, 2022

Most sites are generally flawed in some sense. SPA is just a red herring.

nomilk · on May 21, 2022

> A properly written SPA is very performant

SPAs should offer better UX (by reducing full page loads), but at the expensive of developer hours.

Curious to hear what the difference in development time is from anyone who made the same app as a MPA and later as a SPA.

I'd guess to make the same app as a SPA would take around 2-3 times as long.

BackBlast · on May 21, 2022

My experience is the opposite. I say that from a career that is dominated by backend experience.

In any application, you have to have a good front end. To most users the app/page is the UI.

Having the majority of your concerns in one place will help you develop with smaller teams. Certain SPA architectures can bring nearly ALL of the concerns into the front end. Particularly with databases that are simply port open to the world like say couchdb. Your backend needs almost effectively disappear. If this is a reasonable data model, SPA looks and feels much faster to use and develop.

When you attach a backend, you often attach other specialists, languages, techs (python, ruby, Java). Have to deal with separate teams, which often means a formal API and all the handshaking between. This pretty much triples the required work with development and the communication overhead.