AFAIK there is currently no plan to replace existing php rendering with Vue SSR. They just wanted to make sure the framework they went with supports SSR so they are not locking themselves out of the possibility.
The HN implementation renders the comments on the client side because it was using the Firebase HN API which doesn't provide a friendly API for fetching the entire comment tree. Notably, some other HNPWA implementations were using a custom API endpoint. We didn't switch to it because the Vue HN was built as an educational demo rather than a benchmarking subject.
The HN implementation renders the comments on the client side because it was using the Firebase HN API which doesn't provide a friendly API for fetching the entire comment tree. Notably, some other HNPWA implementations were using a custom API endpoint. We didn't switch to it because the Vue HN was built as an educational demo rather than a benchmarking subject.