SMRTR ProgrammingMay 18, 2026Hacker News

The tyranny of single page apps

SMRTR summary

Single-page apps (SPAs) built with React dominate modern front-end development, but the cost is real: bloated toolchains, massive JavaScript payloads, and complexity that serves corporations more than developers. Facebook's login page alone loads 3.8MB of CSS. Lightweight alternatives like Preact, Astro's islands architecture, and modern CSS processors offer a path forward without the overhead.

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