this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Programming
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The difference between generating JSON and generating HTML is minimal for the server, doesn't seem to me like server side rendered sites have significantly higher server compute costs. Also generally for SPAs, the server has to replicate whatever flow is happening on the client anyway to keep state in line (since the client can't be trusted)
That should be true, but have you looked the HTML of any "modern" site? Dozens of nested elements, each tagged with multiple lines of attributes. Generating that is probably 10x the cost of generating the JSON.
Plus, with server side rendering you also have to recompute the HTML for the entire site, which often means re-computing a whole bunch of non-trivial queries as well.
This is actually why I really like HTMX, you load a page once, then make AJAX requests that return html which you can use to replace or add to the DOM. It provides an interactive front end where the backend provides full rendered html partials. Simplifies the entire application by keeping logic and state only on the server, which means you never have to worry about synchronizing front-end and backed state.
It's not just JSON and HTML. There's also graphic rendering and even machine learning models