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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/[email protected]

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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] 27 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Here's my hot take as a dev who's been making websites since before JavaScript and css were invented: modern web development is leaps and bounds better than how it was and the rapidly changing best practices had a big part for how we got there in the time we did. I think the industry is in a great place now and now that it is things have slowed down and the focus is now on stability rather than changing development patterns.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I agree that things improved. React and others are amazing for CSR. We have static site generators which are also amazing and nice to work with. But SSR territory is in strange place right now. React is overused in places it doesn't belong.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You can configure nextjs to compile as only client-side-rendering, so that it runs like before!

Another thing: NextJS is not only SSR. It’s hybrid. The advantage here is that it decreases the visible first load time.

First load pre-rendered HTML and styling is sent to the browser. So the page is already fully visible. After that all scripts and secondary CSS will be loaded. And even after that the bindings will be done.

Where as with pure CSR, all JavaScripts need to be loaded and executed and only then stuff will become visible to the user

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