When we opened up Sourcegraph to the public a few months ago, it was a rich AngularJS app. The server delivered the initial HTML page and hosted JSON endpoints. AngularJS did everything else. This was an easy way to create the initial version of Sourcegraph, in the early days before we knew what it'd become.
But single-page JavaScript frameworks aren’t a good fit for every site. Sourcegraph is primarily a content site, and we've discovered that for us the benefits of a rich JavaScript app don't outweigh the costs. The benefits are well known; here are some of the unexpectedly difficult things we experienced along the way. We hope this is helpful to other developers who are facing a similar decision.
But single-page JavaScript frameworks aren’t a good fit for every site. Sourcegraph is primarily a content site, and we've discovered that for us the benefits of a rich JavaScript app don't outweigh the costs. The benefits are well known; here are some of the unexpectedly difficult things we experienced along the way. We hope this is helpful to other developers who are facing a similar decision.
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