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Why is React, a client side rendering framework, a popular choice for server side rendering? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/programming

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React (and Vue, et al) was built with client side rendering in mind. It just does not seem to fit the server side rendering pattern.

What are the use cases? From my perspective, if your app is a rich web app with a lot of interactivity, you probably want CSR and don't benefit much from SSR.

If you have a content-centric site, or a site with some interactivity but not much, you want a static site generator, or SSR. But in that case, a template engine with some smaller client side libraries (jQuery or AlpineJS or idk what all is out there).

Using React SSR for all of these seems like the wrong tool. What am I missing?

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago (14 children)

My hot take: Silicon Valley’s kids need to give themselves the illusion of progress with ever changing “best practices” and trends. 30% of my work was probably keeping up with deprecations that rarely truly improve anything.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

The mere existence of the term "server-side rendering" illustrates this well. I remember the first time I read about that concept and immediately thought "you mean the way we've been writing websites since the 90s?"

Maybe I'm just out of date, but IMO web development has completely lost its way. I don't do much frontend work anymore, but when I do my goals are always to see how few JS libraries I need to use and how little JS I need to write in general. The end result of that plus doing all/most work on the backend, sticking to standard HTTP conventions, and using only vanilla JS means super fast and performant websites with fewer bugs, less constant deprecations to keep up with, less security vulnerabilities in all the JS libraries, and no constant headaches from a complex Webpack-style build system for assets. It's actually quite enjoyable when you remove all the bs of modern JS frameworks from your workflows.

[–] hairyballs 1 points 1 year ago

Htmx is a godsend for that. You actually write HTML while having AJAX easily.

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