Comment by ToucanLoucan
3 days ago
Downloading =/= executing. Downloading 60 kb of compressed JavaScript isn't the problem, the problem is running that JavaScript, and all the resulting web calls that JavaScript will do, and all the resulting compute it will take to... I dunno, make the button round or whatever. Load time is no longer a solid metric for a good experience, that's very late 00's of anyone to say, the metric now is how long until the page is laid out, and the controls on it are responsive?
Edit: Also how hot is my phone?
absolutely. page performance is the result of a hairball of initial asset loads, AJAX calls, ad-hoc roundtrips, telemetry bloat, ...
It's so convoluted, and very app specific. Core web vitals provide the right framework to think about what is relevant, but in reality your app likely requires dedicated instrumentation to capture these phases accurately.
I test my damn sites on a fucking iPhone 6 from 2014. Executing that JS is a breeze.
React etc. runs just fine on absolute garbage kiosks. If you introduce 10MB of additional JS on top of 60KB of React, it's those 10MB's fault.
Downloading 60kb of compressed javascript takes way longer than executing it.
Executing 60kb of JS can take between 0s and infinity. You can't summarise it like this.
It's gonna sound elitist but every one of these confident assertions on the part of, for the purposes of discussion I'm assuming are defensive React developers, reinforces that a sizable contingent of the aforementioned developer community has no grasp whatsoever on the fundamentals of programming.
Hate me if you will, but holy fuck. "Downloading this code takes WAY more time than running it" with NO parameters whatsoever on what the code is doing is an absolutely ridiculous assertion.
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