The difference between generating JSON and generating HTML is minimal for the server, doesn’t seem to me like server side rendered sites have significantly higher server compute costs. Also generally for SPAs, the server has to replicate whatever flow is happening on the client anyway to keep state in line (since the client can’t be trusted)
The difference between generating JSON and generating HTML is minimal for the server
That should be true, but have you looked the HTML of any “modern” site? Dozens of nested elements, each tagged with multiple lines of attributes. Generating that is probably 10x the cost of generating the JSON.
Plus, with server side rendering you also have to recompute the HTML for the entire site, which often contains a whole bunch of non-trivial queries as well.
The difference between generating JSON and generating HTML is minimal for the server, doesn’t seem to me like server side rendered sites have significantly higher server compute costs. Also generally for SPAs, the server has to replicate whatever flow is happening on the client anyway to keep state in line (since the client can’t be trusted)
That should be true, but have you looked the HTML of any “modern” site? Dozens of nested elements, each tagged with multiple lines of attributes. Generating that is probably 10x the cost of generating the JSON.
Plus, with server side rendering you also have to recompute the HTML for the entire site, which often contains a whole bunch of non-trivial queries as well.
It’s not just JSON and HTML. There’s also graphic rendering and even machine learning models