Whenever people are duking it out over where UI should be rendered (server vs. client), compute cost inevitably comes up.
“Rendering UI on the server is costly and wasteful,” client-side rendering advocates say.
I’ve heard that claim a lot, but I’ve not seen much to make me believe it matters. Is server rendering really so jarringly expensive that it’s pummeling your bottom line, or is it a negligible blip?
And more importantly, has that cost been weighed against the benefits to user experience on the other side? Particularly for those with low-end Android phones and a slow network connection in nowhere Alabama?
“It’s expensive” is meaningless without reference and context. My compute cost may jump by $100/month, but I’ll gladly pay if it means my conversion or retention rate explodes due to better front-end performance.
The trade-off might not even come out to be worth it, but that’s gotta be determined with more numbers and fewer axioms.
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