> The 2 groups are talking past each other. For people using "SSR" definition (1), it's doesn't look "full circle" because a language like PHP was never in a ru

> The 2 groups are talking past each other. For people using "SSR" definition (1), it's doesn't look "full circle" because a language like PHP was never in a runtime in browsers so there was never a client-side-to-server-side re-use of the rendering code. Exactly. As a PHP guy I'm not thinking in terms of SSR or CSR, but backend and frontend. PHP never had to do things on the client side, that is what HTML and CSS are for (and some JS). JS apparently has to go from client side to now also server side. I don't think it's necessary an advantage to have one and the same language doing both the backend and frontend. I also don't know of any disadvantages, I have no experience with JS frameworks. But everybody is hitting some very interesting points in this whole comment thread. You have some smart remarks about talking past each other. And I also think your observation of PHP never having to run in the browser is a sharp observation. Thx.