> I really think for most cases you only need a view library instead of a heavy application framework. You may not even need that if you target modern browsers

> I really think for most cases you only need a view library instead of a heavy application framework. You may not even need that if you target modern browsers. You can componentize your code using Web Components (or Polymer) and optionally drop in a data management library such as Redux or MobX, and that's that. If your application mostly consists of plain HTML pages enhanced by some JavaScript widgets here and there, that's more than enough. That said, I don't think GitLab falls in this category of applications, and I honestly feel going the full-blown SPA route with server-side rendering will work better for them.