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Comment by swyx | Hacker News Reader

they were using handrolled SSR in clojurescript, I'm not sure they set up code splitting.

> I'm not sure they set up code splitting

Don't think that matters. I've written (from scratch and inherited) and deployed many ClojureScript frontends, from one page ones with lots of interactivity to 30+ pages/sections, none of them reaching the size of 2.5MB minified (when using the production settings for Closure Compiler). Add in SSR and/or code splitting and the weight should be nowhere near there, leading to the guess that something is wrong in their config or they are embedding binary files into the JS asset.

Oh yeah, binary assets. Yeah, it is certainly binary assets. We just embed node.js in there. /s

When people are discussing one's article (I assume it's yours based on your profile) I know it's easy to go into defense. People may criticize, and that hurts. But before lashing out as you do in some comments here, consider that the readers don't have the same background and context as you, and we all discuss based on those. Throwing out React is a huge step for most projects, it may have been good for you, is probably not right for many, and is certainly a discussion worth having.

You know, executables are not the only type of binaries, embedding a PNG file into the JS asset would also be considered embedding a binary asset. But I'm sure you knew this, you're just trying to be funny.

:-) yeah, in the heat of the moment. There is of course things we could do to improve bundle size, but it's all components and logic. We didn't do any css-in-js or any other fancy stuff.

> consider that the readers don't have the same background and context as you, and we all discuss based on those.

Okay, so how about not inventing outrageous ideas on the spot and just consider what is written?

It's equally as hard to unload what's been boiling in your brain for last half a year. I'm reading comments and trying to decide where to expand my post, of course, but this "binary" thing just got me laughing.

Actually webpack has the url-loader which allows embedding binary data as base64 data URLs in your CSS bundle. If used judiciously it can even be a good thing too.

EDIT: I mentioned webpack since the thread is about react, but you can do the same thing manually by putting the base64-encoded data in a data URL on a CSS file.

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