Overkill ? Maybe. But the amount of time saved by not going through "Just having the server side serve the Vue.js app on the main route" is insane. Simplicity

Overkill ? Maybe. But the amount of time saved by not going through "Just having the server side serve the Vue.js app on the main route" is insane. Simplicity is the metric you want to optimize for, because it really reduces opportunities for breakage. Docker adds a few layers, yes, but it also makes deployment, and local launch easier. The only acceptable alternative to Docker, is, IMHO, a makefile. If I open your project and see a Dockerfile, I'm just going to `docker build && docker run`. If I see a makefile, I'm just going to run `make help ; make run || make`. It greatly reduces the cognitive load if I only want to quickly see what the project does.