[tudorconstantin]

Am I the only one thinking that going back full circle to server side rendering, but to a way more convoluted way of having it, is actually a regression rather than evolution technologically? We had SSR since the times of Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and even express. But in a way more straight forward way of doing it: here’s some HTML, with some db queries that takes data, puts it in said HTML and sends it to the browser. Today we have react components that can be executed both on the server and on the client, we need at least 2 servers - one for the frontend and one for the backend, we have to hydrate the components when we render them server side, but not when rendering them in the browser, etc. I feel like we’re inventing stuff just because we can and there’s a huge cohort of engineers who complicate their development experience just because.

[antisol]

You are not the only one thinking this. A couple of years ago I was working with some people who were using next.js.

For some feature they wanted, they explained to me how nextjs has this great "feature", which was "really exciting" and allowed all kinds of fancy stuff that I've been doing since about 2003. They were going to turn on next's server-side rendering.

My immediate reaction was to point out "congratulations, you've just reinvented PHP, only with a much much worse language and two extra servers".

A lot of these "solutions" use three servers, not the two you mention: you use one server you don't have any control over, e.g google static hosting, to host the "compiled" static stuff - then you have that point at a server running node and another copy of all your terrible javascript, and then finally a third server running some more sensible stack, which could easily and more cleanly do the job of the other two using tech that isn't trash.

It's called "progress", and people like you and me just need to get with the times, it seems.

[genatron]

It has been full circle indeed. React is great for front-end development but with the need for having some pre-rendering (e.g. SEO) it's understandable why server-side re-entered the picture. However, with Next it has been slower build times and various twists and turns (a lot of the same things PHP was always bashed for). That's why for SPA apps we now default to Vite + react-router for a 10x speed up in build times on the same hardware.

[mdhb]

It’s primarily the react crowd specifically who have been off doing their own thing for many years at this point and never seem to look outside their ecosystem and are stuck in this bizarre infinite loop of just reinventing the wheel constantly, never really improving anything just chasing one new buzzword after another. It’s really unlike any other dev or engineering ecosystem I’ve ever seen in over 25 years.