Comment by rwl
21 days ago
Presumably the 40mb of data is not from Wikipedia, but the Javascript tracking code bundle needed to turn it into a doomscrollable social media feed. ;) By those standards, I think it’s pretty lightweight! For comparison, the Instagram iOS app is 468.9mb, more than ten times the size…
The 40MB of data is Wikipedia data, the site itself is 21kB.
40mb is way too much for a JS bundle... Even with a framework you could do this with 5mb or less.
> you could do this with 5mb or less
How quick the times change... Back in my days, we put the limit on bundles being maximum 1MB, and it felt large even then.
Don't get me wrong. 5mb is a lot for this, yes. This app, coded with love and interest could easily be made under 1mb.
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Now imagine how big the builds are for Instagram's server side doomscrollable feed algorithm, given their inverse incentives to this project.