I avoid this "rat race." I have been building extraordinarily fast page per click apps in Java (and now Clojure, at one point Play/Scala) for over two decades.

I avoid this "rat race." I have been building extraordinarily fast page per click apps in Java (and now Clojure, at one point Play/Scala) for over two decades. My usual front end is largely static but if I need a little dynamic I now add a touch of Vue or some websockets if push is needed. Minimal but custom JS. On a decent connection it is rare for full click to rendered time to be over 80ms, and usually much faster. I think too many engineers think too much has to be done on the browser side. It just isn't true, for the vast majority of cases, in my experience. Of course, I have built an array of "modern" framework heavy front end apps, and back ends for native mobile apps, but I always start things simple and page per click. It gets the job done and is wicked fast.