On the HN front page most of the links are static and the important dynamic link is "More".
At one end of the spectrum of asynchronous design, the behavior of "More" is determined after the user has clicked on it. At the other other end of the spectrum, the "More" link's behavior is determined at the time the page is constructed. HN uses the latter approach.
Assuming a click on "More", with early binding, the application only reads it's state once (at the time of page construction). With late binding it reads it's state twice, once for page construction and again to construct the next page.
With early binding, only the name of the function has to be passed back immediately, construction of the function itself can be queued depending on server load (e.g. the function can be built 100ms later) and the user is likely unaffected. With late binding a 100ms delay in page building due to server load happens while the user is waiting.
The cost of the continuation approach is that a lot of continuations may be constructed that never get run. That's often less of a worry for people with garbage collectors.
At one end of the spectrum of asynchronous design, the behavior of "More" is determined after the user has clicked on it. At the other other end of the spectrum, the "More" link's behavior is determined at the time the page is constructed. HN uses the latter approach.
Assuming a click on "More", with early binding, the application only reads it's state once (at the time of page construction). With late binding it reads it's state twice, once for page construction and again to construct the next page.
With early binding, only the name of the function has to be passed back immediately, construction of the function itself can be queued depending on server load (e.g. the function can be built 100ms later) and the user is likely unaffected. With late binding a 100ms delay in page building due to server load happens while the user is waiting.
The cost of the continuation approach is that a lot of continuations may be constructed that never get run. That's often less of a worry for people with garbage collectors.