DHH might like you to believe they are a thing of the past:

https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1275902566719610880

I actually went down this rabbit hole after reading this thread about SSR apps vs SPAs, where this comment stood out:

Take for instance an app that I use everyday, Kanbanize. It is built around some server side rendering tech and it is awesome, but I know that some will tell that the UX is subpar, the same can be applied to Basecamp and Hey.

I wondered what Marciol was referring to so googled and found this on HN:

Noteworthy how they tout the success of their “magic” frontend stack made with vanilla JS, lack of a trendy framework, etc. But if you use the app, the UX is fairly laggy, requires frequent refreshes, all the animations and interactions are off - the list goes on and on. It’s noticeably subpar (and I like Hey).

Unfortunately have to agree. I really wanted to love HEY, and while it’s certainly not super laggy or anything, I’m not overwhelmed with the “magic”.

Ran into a host of inconsistencies already, changing between imbox/feed/papertrail on iOS also feels very “unnative” in the sense of not fluid.

The Basecamp folks have always been JavaScript skeptics (my perception at least) so I’m not totally surprised. And while the “magic” may apply to the simplicity of their front end implementation, that’s unfortunately not the same as a magical user experience where in 2020 I do expect a more fluid feel.

It’s quite apparent that often it’s just replacing one HTML block with another without too much thought about transitions.

From the twitter feed: “React is so 2019. HTML + minimum JS is 2020”

Ok. Just as long as you don’t get stuck in 2010

Something like a web email-client really lends itself perfectly to a pure client side JavaScript application. Use the browser’s cache facilities to cache the client side javascript and save server resources by avoiding server side rendering. You don’t care that much about initial load time. Or search engine visibility.

Seems to me that the proof is in the pudding wrt their stack, but it’s probably not what they wanted to prove. I would take a well tuned React SPA over this any day of the week.

Which was in a thread about this tweet:

https://mobile.twitter.com/dhh/status/1275901955995385856

What are your thoughts? Have you changed your mind about SPAs? Always been a fan? Or been a fan and now moving towards “minimal JS” or SSR solutions?