Something needs to be done to encourage some efficiencies given the fact it takes more resources to surf the internet and read about running a k8s cluster than it does to actually run the cluster
There are mechanisms to charge for it.
Only above a certain price point. Our financial system nor our consumer culture support micropayments yet. This effectively limits the web properties that can charge users to a small fraction, so unfortunately "just charge money" isn't the widely-available solution I wish it was yet.
Hell, it's more viable to charge users for your mobile client than the backing service. It's kind of the closest we have to micropayments in a way.
Why should I subsidize your failed model ?
Who should pay for the assembly of the stuff ?
Would you put it together for free just to decide ?
Who pays for the used resources ?
There is more JS being processed, but that JS is smartly split up, bundled and takes care of loading just the content you need on subsequent browsing.
So the gains are:
- less data sent over the wire overall
- faster page loads overall initially and especially on subsequent loads.
- on subsequent loads only parts of the DOM are being rendered, not the whole thing so in some cases it might save you processing power
- no round trips to a DB and template engine, this is mostly a pro for the provider of the content
- some sites with this pattern enable you to download the whole thing as a PWA, so you can look at it offline with a single download.
Netflix, Prime Video etc etc
Hacker News is a better example. It's generated entirely server-side. Why not pay YCombinator a few cents for every page load?