We're missing the context here. For many (most?) web apps I feel like things have kind of gone wrong if the front end requires "major architectural decisions".

We're missing the context here. For many (most?) web apps I feel like things have kind of gone wrong if the front end requires "major architectural decisions". That's not a knock against the greatness of React, etc. so much as it's my observation that most web apps are small and from a technical standpoint quite boring, a smattering of static pages, a couple web forms, etc.