Is server-rendered HTML that bad for 2026 web or is everyone building complex apps?
Many of my customers insists on using Next.js or similar but when I browse their website I don't get the point. They are downloading and executing megabytes of JS while in-page interactions tends to be limited to few basic stuff. Never seen one of their project requiring offline mode. Maybe that's being able to easily replace a [FRAMEWORK] dev with another.
I think the unfortunate truth is the simplest. Web development has long been detached from rationality. People are drawn to complexity like moths to a flame.
> People are drawn to complexity like moths to a flame.
Not to complexity, but to abstraction. The more something is abstracted away, the more fungible "developers" become, to the eventual tune of Claude Code.
No one cares that trying to debug a modern application is as hellish as its performance, the KPI that executives go for is employment budget.
It might be really efficient when you "vibe" and don't know exactly what you want.
On serious projects, it feels like even Claude Code could be more efficient with simple technologies, providing near-instant build and debug.
With reduced abstractions and output looking like input, it can better understand how to fix things rather than trying to guess how to manipulate framework state or injecting hacks.
I don't know if Next.js, TanStack, etc are more abstract than Rails, Django, etc. They're undoubtedly more complex though. I also find it hard to believe that it's some sort of conspiracy by management to make developers more fungible. I've seen plenty of developers choose complexity with no outside pressure.
Many of my customers insists on using Next.js or similar but when I browse their website I don't get the point. They are downloading and executing megabytes of JS while in-page interactions tends to be limited to few basic stuff. Never seen one of their project requiring offline mode. Maybe that's being able to easily replace a [FRAMEWORK] dev with another.