i absolutely hate how the modern web just fails to load if one has javascript turned off. i, as a user, should be able to switch off javascript and have the site work exactly as it does with javascript turned on. it’s not a hard concept, people.
but you ask candidates to explain “graceful degradation” and they’ll sit and look at you with a blank stare.
I’m a full time React and React Native developer. Imo, the frustrations with react are when you server side render. React without SSR is much simpler. But you are 100% right about picking the technology that meets your project’s requirements.
However, let me play devils advocate. Why do you need to SSR your e-commerce site? To optimize your SEO? Seems to me that SEO lately is a lie we’re being sold to make it easier for LLMs to chew through the entire internet, including your SEO e-commerce site. Imo, search engines have stopped serving the consumer. If we forget the SEO component for a second, you could build a killer e-commerce site that uses React and deliver a great user experience. If this is all about SEO, then I’m sure there is lots of garbage we could inject into our projects that would boost SEO. We could add LLM written top 10 articles to a fake blog on our site that nobody actually wants to read, and boost our Google ranking.
It has nothing to do with SEO. We do server side rendering because it’s the simplest thing that works.
It’s simple when it’s all SSR or it’s all client side rendered (CSR). In my experience, mixing is when the headache sets in. There are benefits to SSR and CSR. You want a webpage that works without JavaScript, use SSR. You want a persistent video player that continues the current video as you navigate pages on your site, use CSR.