January 1, 2026
Spa day gone wrong
The Curious Case of the Shallow Session SPAs
Are Single‑Page Apps a One‑Click Wonder? Devs Fight Back
TLDR: Data suggests single‑page websites deliver only one extra in‑app click per full load, raising doubts about their payoff. Comments exploded: one camp says SPAs are easier and smoother, another calls it cargo‑cult hype and questions the data. It matters because teams may be over‑engineering for little gain.
Web perf veteran Alex Russell dropped a bomb: data shows Single‑Page Apps—sites that load one page and swap content with JavaScript—deliver about one in‑app click per full reload. Translation: lots of complexity, not much payoff. The community didn’t hold back.
First, chaos over the headline itself: one reader begged to change “Spas” back to “SPAs,” sparking a mini‑meme of foot baths vs code. Cue jokes like “wrong kind of spa day” while others argued the typo actually made the point — these sites promise relaxation, deliver confusion.
Then came the hot divide: normie3000 swore SPAs are easier to build and maintain, wondering if they’re in a minority. Meanwhile Shalomboy called out “cargo cult programming,” questioning whether the data really sees what devs do inside those single‑page experiences, and scoffing at the idea that teams are just recreating old‑school multi‑page sites (MPAs) with React.
Fans of SPAs say they move faster and feel smoother; skeptics say the numbers show shallow sessions and heavy scripts with little benefit. The result? A high‑energy clash of vibes and charts, with some treating Russell’s take like a wake‑up call and others shouting “let devs dev!” The only consensus: that title typo stole the show.
Key Points
- •Datasets from the RUM Archive and Chrome’s Soft Navigations Origin Trial indicate SPAs average about one soft navigation per hard page load.
- •The author frames the issue using a performance loop model, questioning whether JavaScript-driven navigation reliably reduces latency and variance.
- •Session depth is central: shallow sessions limit the amortization of initial JavaScript costs in SPA architectures.
- •Technologies such as Service Workers, Multi-Page View Transitions, and Speculation Rules could influence navigation performance and the SPA/MPA calculus.
- •If sessions are as shallow as indicated, the practical market space for SPA technologies may be limited, making the question critical for 2026 web performance work.