yeah and it sort of sucks in comparison to most other server-authored HTML solutions, in this statement I am of course thinking of Next but I suppose various forms of suckage will be found in other solutions.
And to me both suck, compared to traditional template rendering like Jinja2 or Django Templates and those suck compared to SXML. React because of JSX and NextJS because of JSX and its assumptions about directory/file structure mapping to request routes, unless you change routing. JSX templates have that same feel, that PHP has from back in the day. Treating HTML as a string, implementing a wannabe HTML, that is not actually HTML, but slightly differen (for example the class attribute of HTML elements, or Fragment, <>) and enabling people to put JS logic inside the that string, mixing everything again, requiring to have a separate parser.
Separate parser is basically what Jinja2 has or other templating engines like Django templates. React could have used any templating engine that already existed.
But compare it to the elegance of SXML and treating HTML as the tree that is it, as structured data, enabling pattern matching on that, avoiding the need for a parser, and all other things that are in the language. Use. Structured. Data. It is so simple.
Mainstream frameworks got a lot to learn still. They are still on the Kindergarden level of treating HTML as a mere string for most parts.
Separate parser is basically what Jinja2 has or other templating engines like Django templates. React could have used any templating engine that already existed.
But compare it to the elegance of SXML and treating HTML as the tree that is it, as structured data, enabling pattern matching on that, avoiding the need for a parser, and all other things that are in the language. Use. Structured. Data. It is so simple.
Mainstream frameworks got a lot to learn still. They are still on the Kindergarden level of treating HTML as a mere string for most parts.