title: Graphql and round trips. Is this just an ios app issue?
body: <p>I'm taking another look at graphql, and I'm trying to understand why saving round trips is a benefit to developers. Is the cost of making a request so expensive? I'm coming from a web development background.</p>
  
  <p>Lets compare a standard rest api with a graphql api.</p>
  
  <p>I need to retrieve a users personal info, and a list of their friends. Traditional rest api might require 2 calls, one to get the personal info, and one to get the friends.</p>
  
  <p>With graphql, I get the same results with one request.</p>
  
  <p>But as a frontend developer, I want my page to have the shortest possible stagnant period. I would like to render only a portion of the page as fast as possible, rather than wait for all the information I need in one go to then render the page.</p>
  
  <p>Now from my understanding, graphql was partly created to solve mobile application api issues. Is there something about ios apps that makes it more beneficial to load all the data at once, as opposed to parallel requests? Or is there something else that I'm missing?</p>