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I worked on multiple webapps that used react and, in a way yes, you could do server-side rendering. But the real advantage of react (and most other framework fo

by maeln 5y ago

I worked on multiple webapps that used react and, in a way yes, you could do server-side rendering. But the real advantage of react (and most other framework for that matter) is to be able to easily program pages that don't need to fully reload everytime you click on something. Sure, you can still do the same with SSR, but framework make it that much more simple and help a lot with separation of concern. Also, it make task splitting between frontend and backend engineer that much more easier.

tored 5y ago
It is definitely possible to do structured dynamic updates without page reloads with SSR because that is what we did 15 years ago before the JSON hype. I know because I worked with it then. The need to separate the team into frontend & backend engineers is a direct consequence of the over complicated frontend frameworks. That is another tragedy of this heavy frontend trend. We are undermining the team’s performance and makes it harder to finish deadlines. Usually what happens is that the frontend & backend engineers get out of sync and starts working on other things until they can sync again. When this happens too often there is push to put the backend and the frontend in different teams. After the split the teams start evolving separate cultures and mindset how to solve things and soon enough both teams has their own build and deploy pipes. Eventually the teams no longer feel that they share a mutual idea of common ownership and the project stagnates. If we keep things nice & simple we can work as fullstack engineers together as a team.