Agreed. Server-side templates only make sense if you assume that every user action will end up needing the DB. If what you're building is really an _app_, and

Agreed. Server-side templates only make sense if you assume that every user action will end up needing the DB. If what you're building is really an _app_, and not just a webpage, you can't expect to compute its UI on the server, making the user wait for a network round-trip for every action. If your app is built around server-side templates, but your UI doesn't need the server, then you end up with a royal mess. The client has to do DOM manipulation over the rendered page, so now the templates have to include convenient hooks for the jQuery selectors your client will need. There ends up being no clear separation between the server's responsibilities and the client's. In this situation it's much better to just let the client own the UI entirely.