I share this frustration. It's ironic that an article explaining compression and efficiency requires so much client-side overhead.
I've been experimenting with a 'Zero-Framework' approach for a biotech project recently, precisely to avoid this. By sticking to Vanilla JS and native APIs (like Blob for real-time PDF generation), I managed to keep the entire bundle under 20KB with a 0.3s TTI.
We often forget that for users on legacy devices or unstable 3G/Edge connections, a 'heavy' interactive page isn't just slow, it's inaccessible. Simplicity shouldn't just be an aesthetic choice, but a core engineering requirement for global equity.
I've been experimenting with a 'Zero-Framework' approach for a biotech project recently, precisely to avoid this. By sticking to Vanilla JS and native APIs (like Blob for real-time PDF generation), I managed to keep the entire bundle under 20KB with a 0.3s TTI.
We often forget that for users on legacy devices or unstable 3G/Edge connections, a 'heavy' interactive page isn't just slow, it's inaccessible. Simplicity shouldn't just be an aesthetic choice, but a core engineering requirement for global equity.