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Comment by warpech | Hacker News Reader

Built mostly with Facebook tech: React, React Native, Jest, Yarn

Which is smart, because Twitter cannot afford the not invented here syndrome right now.

Doesn't seem to use any kind of server-side rendering.

This comment is getting downvoted but if it's true, it's absolutely a good point. They are optimizing for what is inherently slower: loading JS in the client before anything can be seen or interacted with, rather than rendering HTML and forms so one doesn't have to wait for JS to compile and execute (and all the tracking bloat that comes with it).

It's a progressive web app. This means users shouldn't have to wait for JS download or compilation on repeat visits.

I don't know why my comment is getting downvoted. I was just making an observation after looking at the source.

It is not true, the slow part of web applications is loading over the network, server side rendering puts a dependency on the network and is therefore vastly slower.

With service workers and client side storage you can get to display at least a shell, sometimes the entire UI without touching the network. It is a lot faster

Where do you think that JS in a web page comes from? Not from the network?

Service workers are a cache (and background process), and you still have to consider cache misses. Even if you have a giant JS app and cache it, users still have to download all the JS to actually work offline no matter what.

Isn't ReactNative for native mobile apps though? This is a web app

> The client-side JavaScript application is developed, built, and tested with many open source libraries including React, Redux, Normalizr, Globalize, Babel, Webpack, Jest, WebdriverIO, and Yarn.

from https://blog.twitter.com/2017/how-we-built-twitter-lite

OP probably assumed React Native was in the list.

I think they used React Native for Web https://github.com/necolas/react-native-web

Wait what. A web framework, adapted to work for native mobile, adapted back to work on the web?

In React Native, you don't have the standard DOM elements since you're not working in a DOM, so it provides some standard elements that get turned into native components (Button, Text, etc). It looks like this is porting those components back to the web. Sounds silly at first, but looks like it can be useful for RN shops.

Its another step to try an unify building apps, and web apps with the same code.

I believe the author of that module is also one of the main people who worked on the react twitter mobile.

No.. it's PWA.

Sorry, I added React Native by mistake and was not able to edit my comment later.

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