Thanks, a nice trip down the memory lane! All this stuff and more (remember server-side "sessions"?) used to be the norm :). I do genuinely believe that because the speed of light is limited and you can't put backends too close to users the only practical option to speed up the website load is active server-side loading, and the modern fully-client-side-rendered web sites would eventually be looked down upon essentially the same way we view server-only pages now