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.

▲

sosodev 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

▲

mschuster91 32 minutes ago | parent [-]

> 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.

	▲	sosodev 6 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		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.

▲

pjmlp 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It is fashionable, and Vercel has made a chain of partners that make Next.js/React the only official option to extend SaaS products.