I remain convinced that RSC and the SSR craze was a result of someone (or multiple) people needing a raise and their friends wanting to start a company selling abstract compute. Statically hydrated, minimal React was pretty great when served over good CDN infrastructure. Then I watched the bundle sizes and lock-in balloon. That second article is a dragon slayer. It really lays out the problem with React. In marrying itself to Next.js and embracing the server, it's betrayed the platform. Meanwhile, the platform itself has matured. React practically built my career, and I just don't have a reason to choose it anymore.

SSR isn’t a craze. Web applications have been served that way for literal decades now.

Read it in context. There's nothing wrong with SSR.

I agree, if there is a death of React it will be killed by Next/Vercel.

I probably shouldn’t care. I’m just not looking forward to the chaos of another full “turn” in JavaScript, akin to query->backbone or backbone->react.

Maybe I shouldn’t fear it. I’ve just yet to see an idea that feels valuable enough to move an entire ecosystem. Svelte, HTMX, etc… where is the “disruptive” idea that could compel everyone to leave React?

That’s interesting. I’ve always held SvelteKit in high regard for greenfield projects because it balances capability, developer experience, and performance, but I’ll have to give Marko a look. I’d love to see a similar deep dive into Electron style desktop frameworks since that space still feels underexplored compared to mobile. I honestly wouldn’t know where to start for a video game interface, and that bothers me.