> because it doesn't have application state (in a standard runtime/setup) and needs to re-run the entire application for every request.

Where "application" is basically a single page with less code than a typical React page. Even 20 years ago you'd run into DB struggling to give you data fast enough before you hit any issues with the "re-running the entire app".

And you have to screw your database really badly to see any issues early. Hell, phpBB was horrendously bad, running dozens of heavy DB queries on each page, and was still powering some of the internet's busiest forums.

> Now there are a whole bunch of tricks both in the language and with tooling to alleviate that, but still it's inherently there. It's an advantage for other reasons though.

Yes. It is an enormous advantage: it's fire and forget. You don't need to "SSR" your app (getting all data and state), ship it to the client with a bundle, then "re-hydrate" it (once again pulling data and state from the server) etc.