[heluser]

It looks like the answers are heavily biased towards “my favorite tool”. And don’t take into account what’s actually asked. For a person who doesn’t want to become an swe (e.g. working on a specialized area at a big company) and who is a newcomer the answer is simple: JS, period. Take Next.js and try writing something using SO, chatGPT, articles and books. Treat html , css as “will learn on the go when I need something”. Next.js is the closest that the JS has to the standardized, pawed path. It covers all you need front-end, back-end, static sites. Batteries included.

Note: I am mostly a back-end / SWE and mostly avoid JS, but I also have to admit that IMO that’s the best match with the authors goals.

[borisjoffe]

I'd consider Nuxt - it has all the benefits of Next without having to deal with React, and it's also pretty popular/standardized. Vue is easier to write than React

[kirso]

Can I just say, thank you?

Some of the answers are exactly what I've been trying to avoid. My only goal is being able to build my own stuff, I don't really care about kubernetes or scaling. I don't anticipate to have 1m active users with concurrency.

At the same time, I got a bit scared by React quite frankly and hence was only looking at Sveltekit. However you rightly pointed out, its still being shaped despite being similar to Next.js and seems like ideal for React devs who want to jump into more simplicity and "vibes" with DSL.

My only other consideration was Rails but for that one - the learning curve is even steeper.

[Glench]

Reading your question, I think Svelte or SvelteKit is probably a good option like you said. It's basically just JS/HTML/CSS as normal but if you want interactive UI stuff it's very simple to add. At this point SvelteKit is totally stable, it's just not as popular as React so it doesn't have as much community / LLM support.