[zbentley]

I suspect that, in 2-3 years, server-side rendering is going to be rediscovered as a cure for the plague of spaghetti frontend code, just as current template-in-javascript metalanguages are being discovered now as a cure for spaghetti frontend-plus-backend-rendered code.

[jasode]

>I suspect that, in 2-3 years, server-side rendering is going to be rediscovered as a cure for the plague of spaghetti frontend code,

Maybe your prediction is informed by different internet usage scenarios but for general mainstream web surfers, I can't see how the industry will migrate back to server-side rendering in 3 years.

The unavoidable technical issue is the round-trip latency of the network. The same delays from the speed-of-light will still be there in 3 years. Most of the world is accessing the web through mobile phones which has worse latency than desktops. Server-side rendering (which means painful page reloads) is user hostile on slow network connections.

[save_ferris]

You didn’t mention all of the new features coming to HTTP 2 that will alleviate network performance issues (prefetch, multiplex connections, etc.)

I’ve found many sites that use frameworks like react to be much more user hostile, particularly from a performance and accessibility standpoint. The reddit redesign comes to mind. It’s so much slower now than it used to be on a browser (perhaps they’re intentionally doing this to push people to their mobile app), that it’s noticeably reduced the quality of the experience.

I guess I just don’t understand how people see page reloads with proper caching as unacceptable from a performance standpoint compared some JavaScript app maintaining a virtual DOM, which is also likely regularly communicating with a server.

[digitaltrees]

Same with TechCrunch, every time I visit I am reminded how frustrating react sites can be compared to server rendered pages with all the flicker, slow page reveal, and odd navigation it introduced.

[rhizome]

Late loading artifacts is all the fault of JS, not server-side rendering. Not sure what you mean by "odd navigation."

[digitaltrees]

To close an article there is a x button and back swipe is disabled. I agree that flicker is introduced by Javascript. That is what I was saying. Might be ok for an app, but a content driven site seems like it should stick to the concept of pages where navigation is like turning a page. Just seems like server rendering fits that mental model better. Not sure why react even makes sense for a blog.

[ng12]

It doesn't, but blogs aren't built to present content they're built to sell advertisements and collect data. That's much easier with an SPA than a SSR app.

[tambourine_man]

>Server-side rendering (which means painful page reloads) is user hostile on slow network connections.

So is downloading an entire app when you only want to read one page.

[TomMarius]

I believe in a mix of these two. It's going to be server rendered JS app that will download itself on the background and install itself as a PWA. The best of both worlds.

[medof]

So you mean universal application? That's how nuxt.js/next.js works

[TomMarius]

Yes I am aware of these technologies, and it's basically what I mean, in an abstract way

[efdee]

That is what we have today.

[TomMarius]

It is not nearly as polished and as widespread as it could be.

[vast]

So parallelism after one initial slow load is the cure all? I also propose that front end will rediscover that parallelism is hard and isn't always the best fit.

[ng12]

I don't think so, at least not for the kinds of apps I build. My biggest problem is largely around interactivity -- shuffling lots of data back-and-forth between the client and the server. If I'm going to have a SSR app with lots of AJAX code running on the client, I might as well just go all-client.

[kangoo1707]

SSR can be used with React (NextJS), Vue (NuxtJS) and Angular (Universal Angular).

[sooheon]

Isn't that use case just to save time on initial load? An SPA with SSR for load times is different from a webapp structured to have logic mostly in the server.

[vetinari]

That and for the bots, that cannot run javascripts, but do render the page thumbnail for others (facebook et al).

[skrebbel]

This supports the argument you're replying to.

[atombender]

This already happened. Frameworks like Next.js, Vue and Gatsby do server-side rendering out of the box.

Svelte also extremely promising. It brings a brilliant hybrid solution to the table.

[ebiester]

...and then they'll hit POST-redirect-GET and all the problems with the back button and holding state on the server.

[magicnubs]

So, basically video-streaming, but with websites instead of tv shows?

[pjmlp]

Basically what most web frameworks have been doing since we moved beyond CGIs.