You seem to confuse server side rendering for page based apps, these are unrelated. I can build fully dynamic Ajax pageless applications that are effectively j

You seem to confuse server side rendering for page based apps, these are unrelated. I can build fully dynamic Ajax pageless applications that are effectively just as snappy as anything you can with client side rendering while keeping all rendering on the server. Rather than sending down json, I'd just send down rendered fragments of HTML and update the contents of some tag. It's a vastly simpler approach that makes client side code nothing more than update this or that, and works just as well while allowing the traditional server side templates. It's not a relic of the past and it's not on it's way out, nor is it inferior to client side rendering, in fact I think it's better.