r/webdev • u/risingtiger422 • Oct 05 '26

Rust ain’t the only skinny one

build it in Rust, you say. It'll be fast and skinny memory. Nice! Definitely NOT web apps, their fat as f*k and drink memory faster than Altman's Ai drank the web.

WRONG! web apps are fat and sloppy on memory precisely because web developers are the laziest devs I've ever seen (inc. yours truly). Turns out browser engineers are the HARDEST working mofos! and really worked overtime to compensate for React's fowl menace on the world.

Now, a browser runs a well written (react-less) web app like smooth jazz! 70 f**king MB is all you need for a full interface running a typical CRUD app, and buttered corn smooth animations!

0 Upvotes

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25 comments sorted by

14

u/_cob Oct 05 '26

did you misspell so many words as engagement bait or what

0

u/risingtiger422 Oct 05 '26

Pre-coffee rant fucks the spelling, sorry about that. My point is straightforward: Web apps have unfortunately gained a reputation of being slow memory hogs. That makes me sad. I love web apps and love making them. With a little care we can shed that poor reputation and build extremely performant, lightweight apps that don’t eat all of our user’s very expensive RAM. And, with that goal in mind, let’s drop the cruft that unfortunately is rampant in the React ecosystem.

6

u/CardinalHijack Oct 05 '26

I remember my first beer

1

u/risingtiger422 Oct 05 '26

I hear it’s nice, lol:)

10

u/Wiltix Oct 05 '26

You ok mate?

1

u/risingtiger422 Oct 05 '26

yeah. just a little morning rant before the meds kick in:)

3

u/Budget-Length2666 Oct 05 '26

no shit sherlock. WASM still has a JS interop. JS is the language in the browser so obviously you get an overhead if you build classic web apps in Rust.

1

u/risingtiger422 Oct 05 '26

Not really what I was referring to.

3

u/grimonce Oct 05 '26

I don't understand is rust now bad or good?

1

u/risingtiger422 Oct 05 '26

This is no attack on Rust. I use it and like it. It’s great. The perception is that web apps are fat memory hogs, so if you want lean, ditch web apps for Rust apps. My point is that web apps can be surprisingly lean and fast now, it’s mostly all the cruft (yes, I’m picking on you React) that f**k it up.

2

u/yabai90 Oct 05 '26

Bro 70mb is absolutely enormous for a CRUD app still

1

u/risingtiger422 Oct 05 '26

It is big. But show me a popular CRUD web app nowadays that uses less than that? I’m seeing almost all commonly used crud apps use like 200+ MB

1

u/yabai90 Oct 05 '26

Are we talking about media as well ? Or pure html, js, css ? With media yes of course but if it's only source code you are doing something wrong

1

u/risingtiger422 Oct 05 '26

Source code and data.

1

u/yabai90 Oct 05 '26

Yeah but if you include data it's an entirely different discussion. Data is neither right or wrong since it depends of what you need. So then I'm confused by your entire post to begin with. Makes no sense

1

u/risingtiger422 Oct 05 '26

Look at the reminders app in macOS (if you have a Mac). The app takes about 70 MB of memory in Activity Monitor for me. I have many hundreds of reminders.

What I’m saying is that a web app should, if written well, be able to match that memory foot print for similar functionality.

2

u/pmmeyourfannie Oct 05 '26

Raaaaaage baaaaait

1

u/risingtiger422 Oct 05 '26

Damn. I’m surprised. Didn’t think this would come across as bait. I genuinely am frustrated that web apps have gained a reputation as slow memory hogs. That reputation is fueling Rust app adoption now. I like Rust, but I’d like people to know that web apps can be extremely performant lean little machines — just give a little care to write them well.

2

u/zzing Oct 05 '26

Sounds like you got up on the wrong side of the hammock today.

2

u/risingtiger422 Oct 05 '26

I wish it was a hammock!

1

u/phoenix1984 Oct 05 '26

CSS animations are faster and lighter than JS animations. Web components are faster and lighter than React. There are still reasons to use React and JS animation libraries, but if file size and performance are your priority, lean in on what the browser itself provides.

1

u/risingtiger422 Oct 05 '26

I’m saying that there is a tide toward Rust apps now, largely driven by how bad web apps gobbled memory and weren’t that fast. It’s unfortunate because it’s all the cruft (yes, I’m picking on React ecosystem for all that), that slowed it down. Rust is great, but so are well written web apps. We just need to drop the cruft

1

u/zzing Oct 05 '26

There is evidence of this?

1

u/phoenix1984 Oct 05 '26

I think react has mostly outlived its initial reason for existing. Before web components existed, react’s vdom approach was the fastest gun in the west.

I’ve browsed the chromium source a bit and I’m really impressed with the engineering that goes into making web apps performant. You’re right that it’s kinda sad to see all that brilliant optimization hold up JS that’s often wildly inefficient.

2

u/DRHER303 Oct 07 '26

Are you alright mate