>Back in the day you could just send everyone the same HTML/JS/CSS rendered on your server and it would work for everyone.

HN itself works perfect on mobile or anywhere for that matter and is very lightweight. I don't think it's because they optimized it. They just didn't fuck with it.

>Now things are more complicated: people want "native apps" on their Android and iOS

Do people want those? I believe it's just companies shoving those down people's throats