I could write a whole book about the folly that is single page applications.

It's not like they didn't come to be for no reason, but I think most of the reasons were vain, and the same underlying problems can be fixed in better ways with a modicum of lateral thinking.

I mean, there's the data-sharing-between-screens thing. That was nice because it meant a persistent state. But local storage existed already when they were invented. And it's not like we don't pull in loads of API data between screens most of the time, making users wait anyway.

The time it takes to load successive pages is often cited too. Not only does fixing this come at a price (a lot has to be preloaded on hitting the index URL) but it fixes an issue that shouldn't exist anyway: massive individual page sizes with too many assets.

When you start using SSR, that speeds up initial load, but creates a time-to-interaction issue, because the JS library that does everything still has to be parsed. And that always takes longer than the HTML string.

Anyway, add what you think the benefits and shortcomings of SPAs are here, if you have the time.