[deepsun]

Sorry what JS? With aforementioned Apache Struts there's no need for JS to render anything.

But if one wishes, JS can be added, of course (e.g. for DHTML stuff). To avoid render blocking there are "defer" and "async" attributes.

[noisem4ker]

To clarify: it's a CSR problem to solve, not Struts' (which, as you say, is not subject to).

To answer your original question in a pragmatic way: people used to JS tooling, libraries, frameworks obviously want to continue using these, not revert to Struts. Plus, modern tooling facilitates mixing SSR and CSR, and switching between them as needed.

[meotimdihia]

I have 8 years of PHP experience. Let me explain to you. While you can build a static website with Apache Struts or PHP, you must add javascript if you want to build complex sites anyway, for example: Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok,... In the past, everyone used jQuery, but jQuery and ajax can't build complex sites. You will end up with too many Ajax + dynamic elements + bad practices and can't maintain them if you use jQuery.

Finally, you'll end up using React for easy to maintain. And you'll have to wait to load React + related packages => it is slow for initial render => and SSR solved the problem.

Also, you just need a single team to build a complex application while using React instead of backend + frontend as traditionally.

[psnehanshu]

+1 for this. There are a lot of uninformed detached-from-reality people lying around here that think Next.js and friends are just reinventing PHP. I will reply them with the link to this comment.