> It's no longer just text, images and links.

Assuming you add video, 99% of the web is just text,images,links,forms, and video. None of these things even require Javascript.

I'd say a big part of the web is gaming, chatting, interacting. A lot of that content updates every few seconds. Without JS, websockets, ajax requests etc, do you suggest users load the entire page again whenever they want to see an updated view?!

Or is your opinion that it should only be possible to do those things in native, purpose-built apps? Because in that case, how do you justify using an operating system? Perhaps we should exclusively use purpose-built assembly code that you flash to some writable media every time you want to run a particular program!

As another poster said: The right tool for the right job.

Also, a SPA is not the only option with Javascript.

How would the site we’re communicating on right now be improved if it were rebuilt as an SPA?

Threading could be clearer. Less data would need to be loaded on each page load. I can imagine that a lightweight SPA to handle the a few standard views (e.g. listItems, itemDetails, profile, changePassword, submit) would cut down data transfer by a significant margin (20-30%, maybe more). The UI could also be much better on mobile, and we could give users the option to cache certain pieces of content offline.

Offline use already works great, unlike in any SPA I've ever used.

1) Load the page.

2) The page is now fully loaded and ready for reading without any need for further network requests.

For even more offline use, try printing it! HN threads work superbly when printed, again unlike most modern sites.

I don't think printing is a viable solution for most users. I'm guessing most would want to download the comment threads to their phone so they could read them later in situations where connectivity is patchy (eg train/plane etc).

Right. You can do this now by loading the page in a background tab, leaving the tab open and then going offline. Works great.

Or you could reimplement newsgroups (but with less interoperability) as an SPA, which in theory would work great (once you work out the kinks) but in practice would suffer from all kinds of little issues in the from-scratch reimplementation of everything. For example, printing would probably forever be a wishlist item in the backlog.

What you’re suggesting is heresy on HN. It’s true, a little bit of interactivity, fonts/padding/spacing would improve HN. To this day my thumb covers both the upvote and down vote button.

Yes, the UX on mobile leaves a lot to be desired in my opinion. The two things that are going for HN in its current form is the fact that it's lightweight and fast.

A lot of people think that moving to an SPA would mean killing both those aspects. But the truth is, you CAN have an SPA that is both lightweight and fast - the developer just needs to know what they're doing.

I have yet to see this...

You can check out nodebb for example, tons of JavaScript and quite frankly it’s a better forum experience than reddit or HN:

https://community.nodebb.org/category/2/general-discussion