I agree with you. I hate hate hate having every single operation on a website take 1-2 seconds in good conditions, and 5-6 seconds on average conditions. I've developed a habit of tab clicking every hyperlink I think I might need just to navigate a little faster. Having the browser act like an application and then that application query data from the server fixes the performance problem... well at the least makes the performance problem fixable.
The problem is, Just because the client should download the application to work with your server, does NOT mean that the application has to be written in an insanely complicated framework with a year long spin up time and constantly changing semantics that makes it impossible to debug anything and obscures the performance of your application. Those two things are different.
The problem is, Just because the client should download the application to work with your server, does NOT mean that the application has to be written in an insanely complicated framework with a year long spin up time and constantly changing semantics that makes it impossible to debug anything and obscures the performance of your application. Those two things are different.