GoKawiilThe tyranny of single page apps
16 May, 2026
There is no such thing as front-end engineer anymore. We are all single page app developers. And are you even a single page app developer if you don't know React? As someone who has over 10 years of experience in a non-React framework, I can confidently give that a no .
Full disclosure: I'm just a little bit of a lefty. But honestly, I don't think you really need to be a hardcore lefty to see that technocapitalism has become a major problem of our time. Being against tech monopolies is now the moderate position.
So what exactly is a single-page app? The blog you are reading at the moment is an example of a multi-page app. You click on a link, and that link takes you to another webpage. The browser fires off a request and does a full reload so you're looking at a fresh new page, loading a new set of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.
I think calling this blog an "app" is a bit of a stretch. It's more of a "webpage". It feels like calling something a "webpage" is antiquated, but there's a lot about Bearblog that's "antiquated". Anyway, I'm going to abbreviate them as MPW.
When I think of an "app", I think of gmail, Reddit, Facebook, GitHub , and other big web apps.
When you're using Facebook and you click on a post, you aren't actually going to a separate page. A complex set of JavaScript intercepts that click, and tricks you into thinking you've gone to a new page. But you haven't. The browser just shows you at a new URL and loads a little bit more JavaScript and CSS.
The dark side
The wealth of those societies in which the technofeudalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of memes”.
... continue reading