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Comment by weird-eye-issue | Hacker News Reader

So your takeaway is that business logic should be done on the server. Hasn't it always been like this?

Has been the true core vision of the web if not mobile. If I remember correctly, that is how the original Basecamp was implemented, or Craigslist (still is?)... or this very website

Also I just realized the irony of them using GraphQL. They've really come full circle

OP is likely talking about local business logic, ie password field is min 3 chars long. You validate that in the FE before sending it up to get instant feedback to the user.

Your API should be fast enough and hosted on the edge so that the server side validation is instant feedback

There are external factors apart from your own API that can impact latency, for example a user could be in an area of poor internet connection or have a slow connection. Users do not live in our perfect development environment bubble where everything just works, it’s important not to assume that.

If it takes 1 second for a small percent of users to get form validation back it won't impact the business

That's how we got to "download 50 GB before playing a game on a console is fine", feels like we just stopped carying. Sending the form to the BE just to do same basic validation adds so much latency to the UI that it feel unusable for many/most users.

Related: A few Sundays ago I wanted to play Anno again. Sadly it was not installed on the Laptop I used. So i started downloding it because you won't get it on DVD/as iso-file today). Now it's a few Sundays after and I didn't play yet - because the download took 7 hours.

That's such a ridiculous logical falacy. You already have to send the form input to submit the form in the first place and you already need server side validation.

I just checked one of my app's register page (which makes > $2M ARR). If you submit a short password it returns an error from the backend that says "Password should be at least 6 characters.". (It uses Supabase). But yeah, that is so unusable it is basically the same as taking 7 hours to download a game onto your Playstation. Great logic!

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