"JSON is faster"

by FND

Discussing isomorphic JavaScript at dotJS, I questioned the value of client-side templating – and was confronted once again with the “but … JSON is faster!?” assertion.

So I ended up drawing this crude diagram (in the air), successfully arguing that delivering JSON to generate web UIs does in fact merely add complexity and overhead:

     server | client
            |
        +-- | --> HTML ------------------> DOM
        |   |                               ^
    ----+   |                               |
        |   |                               |
        +-- | --> JSON                      |
            |       |         e.g. React    |
            |     parse   + - - - - - - - ->+
            |       |    /                  |
            |       v   /                   |
            |    JS object --templating-> HTML

Might come in handy again sometime…